
Gass BPg-'-^ 
Book B.3 



) <^ '• 



■3 p 



THE J 

FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF 

BEING 

NOTES INTRODUCTORY TO THE 
STUDY OF THEOLOGY 



BY THE 

RIGHT HON. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR "^ 

AUTHOR OF "a DEFENCE OF PHILOSOPHIC DOUBT," ETC. 



EIGHTH EDITION, REVISED 
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARV 



LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO, 

91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
LONDON AND BOMBAY 

1902 

All rights reserved 



■33 

'.'SO a 



Copyright, 1894, by 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 

Copyright, 1902, by 
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 



All rights reserved 



J 



• o i 



First Edition, February, 1895 
RepriwteC-^ Mj{rca, kPiRrx.,,MAVi June, aiid^ October, 1895, December, 1896 
■ , ' ' , ' , ,'. .' !-'.•' !•' 'rt«^visGD; April,' iqo^ 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND B00K8INDINQ COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



CONTENTS 



PAGB 

Introduction vii 

Note xxxv 

Preliminary i 



PART I 

SOME CONSEQUENCES OF BELIEF 

CHAPTER 

I. Naturalism and Ethics ii 

II. Naturalism and Esthetic 33 

III. Naturalism and Reason 67 

IV. Summary and Conclusion of Part I , » • 77 



PART II 

SOME REASONS FOR BELIEF 

I. The Philosophic Basis of Naturalism . . 89 
II. Idealism ; after some recent English Writ- 
ings 137 

III. Philosophy and Rationalism . . . .163 

IV. Rationalist Orthodoxy 182 



VI CONTENTS 

PART III 

SOME CAUSES OF BELIEF 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Causes of Experience . . . . . . 193 

II. Authority and Reason . . . . . .202 



PART IV 

SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS A PROVISIONAL PHILOSOPHY 

I. The Groundwork 243 

II. • Ultimate Scientific Ideas ' . . . .261 

III. Science and Theology 271 

IV. Suggestions towards a Provisional Unifica- 

tion 303 

APPENDIX 

Beliefs, Formulas, and Realities . . .341 

SUMMARY .371 



INTRODUCTION 



THE EIGHTH EDITION 

Except for three or four explanatory notes and a few 
verbal corrections, the body of the following essay 
remains what it was in the preceding editions. But 
I have added a summary of the argument, and trans- 
ferred to an appendix two chapters which are some- 
what parenthetical in character. I propose now to 
say a few words by way of introduction, in the hope 
of preventing some of the misconceptions to which 
experience has shown this presentation of my views 
to be peculiarly liable. 

I am far from thinking that these misconceptions 
are mainly due to the carelessness of the reader. 
Surveying the work after an interval of years, with 
a rested eye, I perceive in it certain peculiarities or, 
if it be preferred, errors of construction, which may 
well leave the reader more impressed — favourably or 
unfavourably — by particular arguments and episodes 
than by the ordered sequence of the whole. A well- 
known theologian (who, by the way, has himself 
completely failed to catch my general drift) observed 

vii 



vm INTRODUCTION TO 

in a review, which he has since republished, that the 
book is redeemed by its digressions ; ^ and though I 
cannot be expected gratefully to accept so dubious 
a compliment, I admit that the interest of certain 
branches of the subject has occasionally betrayed 
me into giving them a relative prominence which 
the bare necessities of the general argument hardly 
seem to justify. Examples in point are the aesthetic 
discussion in the second chapter of Part I., and the 
chapter on Authority in Part III. 

I have made no attempt to correct this fault, if 
fault it be. Had I done so the book would, no doubt, 
have been a good deal altered, but I doubt whether 
it would on the whole have been altered for the 
better. It might have gained in proportion and 
balance ; but it would, perhaps, have lost whatever 
freshness and spontaneity it may ever have possessed. 
I have, therefore, contented myself with providing, 
in the argumentative summary mentioned above, a 
corrective to the too detailed treatment of certain 
portions of the work, hoping that by thus unspar- 
ingly thinning out the trees I shall enable the most 
careless wayfarer to understand without difficulty 
the general lie of the wood. I desire, however, 
emphatically to express a (perhaps not unbiassed) 
opinion that the book is something more than the ex- 
pansion of its sum mary, and that no extract or essence 

^ Catholicism, Roman and Anglican, by Principal Fairbairn, 
p. 384. 



THE EIGHTH EDITION IX 

can really reproduce the qualities of the original 
preparation — whatever those qualities may be worth. 

To turn now from the form of the essay to its 
substance. The objection which seems most readily 
to suggest itself to my critics, is that the whole 
argument is a long endeavour to find in doubt the 
foundation of belief, to justify an excess of credulity 
by an excess of scepticism. If all creeds, whether 
scientific or theological (it is thus I am supposed to 
argue), are equally irrational, all may be equally ac- 
cepted. If there is no reason for believing anything, 
and yet something must in fact be believed, let that 
something be what we like rather than what we dis- 
like. If constructive reason is demonstrably barren, 
why should we be ashamed to find contentment in 
prejudice ? 

I am not concerned to defend a theory which, 
whatever be its merits, is by no means the one which 
the following essay is intended to advocate. But it 
may be worth while to dwell for a moment on the 
causes to which this misconception of the argument 
is probably due. The first of these, though by 
much the least important, is, I imagine, to be found 
in the avowedly tentative character of the scheme 
of thought I have endeavoured to expound. This 
scheme certainly claims, rightly or wrongly, to be 
philosophical, but it does not claim to constitute a 
philosophy ; nor do I for a moment desire to enter 
into the humblest competition with the great archi- 



X INTRODUCTION TO 

tects of metaphysical systems. The world owes much 
to these remarkable men, but it does not owe them as 
yet a generally accepted theory of the knowable ; nor 
can I perceive any satisfactory indication that we 
are on the high-road to such a measure of agree- 
ment, either about the method of philosophy or its 
results, as has prevailed for two centuries in the case 
of science. Kant was of opinion that * metaphysic, 
notwithstanding its high pretension, had' (up to the 
publication of the ' Critique of Pure Reason ' ) ' been 
wandering round and round the same point without 
gaining a step.' If Kant's criterion of progress, 
namely, universal and permanent approval, is to be 
as rigorously applied to the period subsequent to 
178 1 as he applied it to the preceding twenty cen- 
turies, I fear that in t/zts respect the publication of 
his masterpiece can hardly be said to open a new 
philosophic epoch. But without fully accepting this 
pessimistic view, it is surely permitted to those who 
do not feel themselves able either to frame a fresh 
system of philosophy or to acknowledge the jurisdic- 
tion of any old one, candidly to confess the fact, 
without thereby laying themselves open to the 
charge of being dangerous sceptics masquerading 
for some sinister purpose as defenders of the faith ! 
No doubt this unambitious procedure has its diffi- 
culties. It carries with it, as an almost inevitable 
corollary, the admission, not only that the provisional 
theory advocated is incomplete, but that to a certain 



THE EIGHTH EDITION XI 

extent its various parts are not entirely coherent. 
For if our ideal philosophy is, as I think it ought to 
be, a system of thought co-extensive with the know- 
able and the real, whose various elements are shown 
not only to be consistent, but to be interdependent, 
then it seems highly probable that anything short of 
this would not only be incomplete, but to a certain 
extent obscure and contradictory. It does not seem 
likely, nay, it seems almost impossible, that our 
knowledge of what is only a fragment could be exact 
knowledge even of that fragment. Divorced from 
the context which it explains, and by which it is it- 
self explained, it must surely present incongruities 
and mysteries incapable of complete solution. To 
know^ in part must not merely be to know something 
less than the whole, but to know that something 
loosely and imperfectly. 

Now this modest estimate of the present reach of 
speculation may, no doubt, be contrasted with two 
others, both of which seem at first sight more in 
harmony with the dignity of reason. That dignity 
is, of course, not impaired by a mere admission of 
ignorance. It is on all hands allowed that by far the 
largest portion of the knowable is yet unknown, and, 
so far as mankind on this planet are concerned, is 
likely to remain so. But our ignorance and our cor- 
relative knowledge may be pictured in more than 
one way. We might, for example, conceive ourselves 
as in possession of a general outline of the knowable, 



xii INTRODUCTION TO 

though ignorant of its details — as understanding in 
a broad but thoroughly consistent fashion the mutual 
relation of its principal provinces, though minutely 
acquainted with but a small corner of one of them. 
We should in that case be like geographers who had 
determined by an accurate triangulation the position 
of a few high mountain peaks dominating some vast 
continent, while avowedly unable to explore its in- 
terior, to penetrate its forests, or navigate its streams. 
Their knowledge would thus be small ; yet in a cer- 
tain sense it would cover the ground, it would be 
thoroughly coherent, and neither the progress of 
thought nor accumulating discoveries, however they 
might fill up its outlines, could seriously modify 
them. 

Something not much less than this has from time 
to time been claimed for the great metaphysical and 
theological systems by their disciples, perhaps even 
by their founders. And though I cannot persuade 
myself that we have as yet reached anything like 
this breadth and sureness of vision, it is not with 
those who think otherwise that my main controversy 
has to be fought out. The vital issue lies rather 
with those (in this book termed Naturalists) who 
map out the world of knowledge in a very different 
fashion. Unlike the metaphysicians, they glory in 
the limitations of their system. The narrower range 
of their vision is, they think, amply redeemed by its 
superior certitude. They admit, or rather proclaim, 



THE EIGHTH EDITION Xlll 

that the area of reality open to their investigation is 
small compared with that over which Metaphysics 
or Theology profess to range. But though small, 
it is admittedly accessible ; such surveys as have 
already been made of it are allowed on all hands to 
be trustworthy ; and it yields up its treasures of 
knowledge to methods of exploration which, valid 
though they be, can never, from the nature of the 
case, be employed in searching out the secrets of 
the surrounding solitudes. 

It is, I imagine, by those whose philosophy con- 
forms to this type, who are naturalistic rather than 
metaphysical, that the charge against the following 
essay of misusing sceptical methods is principally 
urged. And this is what might have been expected. 
Scepticism in the field of Theology or Metaphysic 
is too common to excite remark. Believers in 
Naturalism are sceptical about all theology and all 
metaphysics. Theologians and Metaphysicians are 
sceptical about all theology and all metaphysics but 
their own. The one subject which sceptical criticism 
usually spares is the one subject against which, in 
this essay, it is directed, namely, the current beliefs 
about the world of phenomena. No wonder there- 
fore that those to whom beliefs of this character rep- 
resent the sum of all actual and all possible knowl- 
edge find ground of suspicion against this method of 
conducting controversy. No wonder they suggest 
that freedom of thought when thus employed is in 



XIV INTRODUCTION TO 

some danger of degenerating into licence ; that at the 
best it is useless, and may easily become harmful. 

Objections like these compel us to enquire into the 
legitimate uses of sceptical or destructive criticism. 
That it has its uses is denied by none. To hasten 
the final disintegration of dying superstition would 
be one, I suppose, universally approved of. But 
there will be less agreement about its value when ap- 
plied, as it is applied in the following pages, to beliefs 
which are neither dead nor likely to die. Everybody 
is gratified by the refutation of theories from which 
they differ ; but they are apt to receive with im- 
patience any criticism of statements on the truth of 
which (it may be) both they and the critic are agreed. 
Such questionings of the unquestionable are judged 
not only to be superfluous, but to be of dubious ex- 
pediency — disquieting yet unproductive, a profitless 
display of more or less ingenious argumentation. 

Now, it may readily be acknowledged that philo- 
sophic scepticism which neither carries with it, nor 
is intended to carry with it, any practical doubt, 
finds its chief uses within the region of pure specu- 
lation. There it may be a valuable measure of the 
success which speculative effort has already attained, 
a needful corrective of its exaggerated pretensions. 
It is at once a spur to philosophic curiosity and a 
touchstone of philosophic work. But even outside 
the sphere of pure speculation this sceptical criticism 
has its uses — humbler, no doubt, yet not without 



THE EIGHTH EDITION XV 

their value. Though it provides no material out of 
which a creed can be formed, it may yet give a much- 
needed warning that the apparent stability of some 
very solid-looking beliefs cannot be shown to extend 
to their foundations. It may thus most wholesomely 
disturb a certain kind of intellectual dogmatism, 
which is often a real hindrance to free speculation, 
and so prepare the ground for constructive labours, 
to which directly it contributes nothing. 

This is the use to which I have endeavoured to 
put it; and surely not without ample justification. 
How many persons are there who acquiesce in the 
limitations of the Naturalistic creed, not because it 
appeals to them as adequate — responsive and satis- 
fying to their whole nature — but because loyalty to 
reason seems to require their acceptance of it, and to 
require their acceptance of nothing else ? * Positive 
knowledge ' they are taught to believe is really 
knowledge, and is the only knowledge. All else is 
but phantasie, unverified and unverifiable — specula- 
tive ore, unminted by experience, which each man 
may arbitrarily assess at his own valuation, which 
no man can force into general circulation. Natural- 
ism, on the other hand, provides them with a system 
of beliefs which, with all its limitations, is in their 
judgment rational, self-consistent, sure. It may not 
give them all they ask ; but what it promises it gives ; 
and what it gives may be accepted in all security. 

Now critical scepticism is the leading remedy 



XVI INTRODUCTION TO 

indicated for this mood of dogmatic serenity. If it 
does nothing else, it should destroy the illusion that 
Naturalism is a creed in which mankind may find 
intellectual repose. It suggests the question whether, 
after all, there is, from the point of view of disin- 
terested reason, this profound distinction between 
the beliefs which Naturalism accepts and those which 
it rejects, and, if not, whether it can be legitimate to 
suppose that the so-called ' conflict between religion 
and science' touches more than the fringe of the 
deeper problems with which we are really confronted 
in our endeavour to comprehend the world in which 
we live. 

I have no doubt myself how this question should 
be answered. In spite of the importunate clamour 
which this 'conflict' has so often occasioned since 
the revival of learning, drowning at times even the 
domestic quarrelling of the Churches, the issues de- 
cided have, after all, been but secondary and unes- 
sential. It is true, no doubt, that high ecclesiastical 
authorities have seen fit from time to time to de- 
nounce the teaching of astronomy, or geology, or 
morphology, or anthropology, or historical criticism. 
It is also true that in the long run science is seen to 
be justified of all her children. But do not on this 
account let us fall into the vulgar error of supposing 
that these skirmishings decide, or help to decide, the 
great cause which is in debate between naturalism 
and religion. It is not so. The difficulties and ob- 



THE EIGHTH EDITION XVli 

scurities which beset the attempt to fuse into a 
coherent whole the living beliefs of men are not to 
be found on one side only of the line dividing re- 
ligion from science. Naturalism is not the goal 
towards which we are being driven by the intel- 
lectual endeavour of the ages; nor is anything 
gained either for philosophy or science by attempt- 
ing to minimise its deficiencies. 

Some may think that in the following pages I 
have preached from this text with too persistent an 
iteration. At any rate, I seem to have given certain 
of my critics the impression that the principal, if not 
the sole, object of this work was to show that our 
beliefs concerning the material world and those con- 
cerning the spiritual world are equally poverty- 
stricken in the matter of philosophic proof, equally 
embarrassed by philosophic difficulties. This, how- 
ever, is not so ; and if any think that by over-em- 
phasis I have given just occasion for the suspicion, 
let them remember how deeply rooted is the prejudice 
that had to be combated, how persistently it troubles 
the conscience of the religious, how blatantly it 
triumphs in the popular literature of infidelity. 

But, of course, the dissipation of a prejudice, 
however fundamental, can at best be but an indirect 
contribution to the work of philosophic construction. 
Concede the full claims of the argument just 
referred to, it yet amounts to no more than this — 
that while it is irrational to adopt the procedure of 



XVlll INTRODUCTION TO 

Naturalism, and elevate scientific methods and 
conclusions into the test and measure of universal 
truth, it is not necessarily irrational for those who 
accept the general methods and conclusions of 
science, to accept also ethical and theological beliefs 
which cannot be reached by these methods, and 
which, it may be, harmonise but imperfectly with 
these conclusions. This is indeed no unimportant 
result: yet if the argument stopped here it might 
not be untrue, though it would assuredly be mislead- 
ing, to say that the following essay only contributed 
to belief in one department of thought, by suggest- 
ing doubt in another. But the argument does not 
stop here. The most important part has still to be 
noted — that in which an endeavour is made to show 
that science, ethics, and (in its degree) aesthetics, are 
severally and collectively more intelligible, better 
fitted to form parts of a rational and coherent 
whole, when they are framed in a theological setting, 
than when they are framed in one which is purely 
naturalistic. 

The method of proof depends essentially upon the 
principle that for a creed to be truly consistent, there 
must exist a correspondence between the account it 
gives of the origin of its beliefs and the estimate it 
entertains of their value ; in other words, there must 
be a harmony between the accepted value of results 
and the accepted theory of causes. This compressed, 
and somewhat forbidding, formula will receive ample 



THE EIGHTH EDITION XIX 

illustration in succeeding chapters, but even here it 
may perhaps be expanded and elucidated with ad- 
vantage. 

What, then, is meant by the phrase ' an accepted 
value ' in (say) the case of scientific beliefs ; and 
how can this be out of * harmony with their origin ' ? 
The chief ' accepted value,' the only one which we 
need here consider, is truth. And what the formula 
asserts is that no creed is really harmonious which 
sets this high value on truth, or on true beliefs, and 
at the same time holds a theory as to the ultimate 
origin of beliefs which suggests their falsity. If, 
underlying the rational apparatus by which scientific 
beliefs are formally justified, there is a wholly non- 
rational machinery by which they are in fact pro- 
duced, if we are of opinion that in the last resort 
our stock of convictions is determined by the blind 
interaction of natural forces and, so far as we know, 
by these alone, then there is a discord between 
one portion of our scheme of thought and another, 
between our estimate of values and our theory of 
origins, which may properly be described as incon- 
sistency. 

Again, if in the sphere of aesthetics we try to 
combine the * accepted value ' of some great work of 
art or some moving aspect of Nature, with a theory 
which traces our feeling for the beautiful to a blind 
accident or an irresponsible freak of fashion, a like 
collision between our estimate of worth and our 



XX INTRODUCTION TO 

theory of origins must inevitably occur. The 
emotions stirred in us by loveliness or grandeur 
wither in the climate produced by such a doctrine, 
and the message they seem to bring us — not, as we 
would fain hope, of less import because it is inarticu- 
late — becomes meaningless or trivial. 

A precisely parallel argument may be applied 
with even greater force in the sphere of ethics. 
The ordinarily * accepted value ' of the moral law, 
of moral sentiments, of responsibility, of repentance, 
self-sacrifice, and high resolve, clashes hopelessly 
with any doctrine of origins which should trace the 
pedigree of ethics through the long-drawn develop- 
ments produced by natural selection, till it be finally 
lost in some material, and therefore non-moral, be- 
ginning. In this case, as in the other two, we can 
only reach a consistency (relative, indeed, and im- 
perfect at the best) if we assume behind, or immanent 
in, the chain of causes cognisable by science, a uni- 
versal Spirit shaping them to a foreseen end. 

The line of argument thus indicated is the exact 
opposite of one with which we are all very familiar. 
We are often told — and it may be properly told — 
that this or that statement is true, this or that 
practice laudable, because it comes to us with a 
Divine sanction, or because it is in accordance with 
Nature. In the argument on which I am insisting 
the movement of thought is reversed. Starting from 
the conception that knowledge is indeed real, that 



THE EIGHTH EDITION XXI 

the moral law does indeed possess authority, it 
travels towards the conviction that the source from 
which they spring can itself be neither irrational nor 
unmoral. In the one case we infer validity from 
origin : in the other, origin from validity. 

It is of course evident that in strictness the 
' validity ' from which * origin ' is thus inferred, is 
not so much the absolute validity of even the most 
widely accepted conclusion, as the valid tendency of 
the general processes out of which these conclusions 
have arisen. To base our views of the universe on 
the finality and adequacy of particular scientific 
and ethical propositions or groups of propositions, 
might well be considered hazardous. Not only is 
the secular movement of thought constantly requir- 
ing of us to restate our beliefs, but as I have shown 
in a later portion of this volume, even in those 
cases where no restatement is necessary, this is not 
because the beliefs to be expressed remain un- 
changed, but because our mode of expressing them is 
elastic. No such admission, however, really touches 
the essence of the argument. It is enough for my 
purpose to establish that we cannot plausibly assume 
a truthward tendency in the belief-forming processes, 
a growing approximation to verity in their results, 
unless we are prepared to go further, and to rest that 
hypothesis itself on a theistic and spiritual founda- 
tion. 

On the argument thus barely and imperfectly 



XXll INTRODUCTION TO 

outlined two further observations may perhaps be 
made. The first is that, like every other appeal 
to consistency, it is essentially an argumentum ad 
hominem. It can only affect the man who ' accepts ' 
both the * estimate of value * and the * theory of 
origin.* On him who is unmoved by beauty, or who 
regards morality and moral sentiments as no more 
than a device for the preservation of society or the 
continuation of the race, neither the aesthetic nor the 
ethic branch of the argument can have any hold or 
purchase. For him, again, if any such there be, 
whose agnosticism requires him to cut down his 
creed to the bare acceptance of a perceiving Self and 
a perceived series of subjective states, there can be 
no conflict between the theory of origins and the 
accepted value of the consequent beliefs, since by 
hypothesis he neither has, nor could have, any theory 
of origins at all. He lives in a world of shadows 
related to each other only as events succeeding each 
other in time ; a world in which there is no room for 
contradiction as there is no room for anything that 
deserves to be called knowledge. The man who 
makes profession of such doctrines may justly be 
suspected of lying, but he is not open, in this con- 
nexion at least, to any charge of philosophic incon- 
sistency. 

It may in the second place be worth noting that 
the preceding argument is both suggested by the 
modern theory of universal development, and is 



THE EIGHTH EDITION XXlll 

(as I think) its necessary philosophic complement. 
Before this general point of view was reached, the 
interest taken in the causes which produced beliefs 
as distinguished from the reasons which also justify 
them, was confined to particular cases, and suggested 
as a rule by a controversial or historical motive. 
This or that doctrine was inspired {i.e. immediately 
caused) by God, and therefore it was true ; by the 
Devil, and therefore it was false : was due to the 
teaching of a power-loving priesthood ; was un- 
consciously suggested by ^elf-interested motives; 
was born of parental influence or the subtle power of 
social surroundings — such and such like comments 
have always been sufficiently common. But until 
the theory of evolution began to govern our recon- 
struction of the past, observations like these were but 
detached and episodical notes. They represented no 
generalised or universal view as to the genesis of 
human opinions. To regard all beliefs whatever, be 
they true or false, our own or other people's, as having 
a natural history as well as a logical or philosophical 
status; to see them not merely as conclusions, but 
as effects, conditioned, like all other effects, by a 
succession of causes stretching back into an illimit- 
able past; to recognise the fact that, so far as 
induction and observation can inform us, only a 
fraction of these causes, and those not the most 
fundamental, can be described as rational — all this is 
new. New also (at least in degree) is it to realise 



XXIV INTRODUCTION TO 

that the beginnings of morality are lost among the 
self-preserving and race-prolonging instincts which 
we share with the animal creation ; that religion in 
its higher forms is a development of infantine, and 
often brutal, superstitions ; that in the pedigree of 
the noblest and most subtle of our emotions are to 
be discovered primitive strains of coarsest quality. 

But though these truths are now admitted as 
truths of anthropology, I do not think their full 
philosophical consequences have yet been properly 
worked out. Their true bearing on the theory of 
scientific belief seems scarcely to have been recog- 
nised. In the domain of religious speculations there 
are many who suppose that to explain the natural 
genesis of some belief or observance, to trace its 
growth from a lower to a higher form in different 
races and widely separated countries, is in some way 
to throw it into discredit. In the sphere of Ethics 
a like suspicion has perhaps prompted the various 
attempts to construct ' intuitive ' systems of morals 
which shall owe nothing to historical development 
and psychological causation. I cannot believe that 
this is philosophically to be defended. Nothing, and 
least of all what most we value, has come to us ready 
made from Heaven. Yet if we are still to value it, 
the modern conception of its natural growth requires 
us more than ever to believe that from Heaven in 
the last resort it comes. 

There is one more point on which I desire to throw 



THE EIGHTH EDITION XXV 

light before bringing this Introduction to a close, one 
other class of objector whom, if possible, I should 
wish to conciliate. To these critics it may seem that, 
whatever be the value of the argumentative scheme 
herein set forth, it does not even pretend to give them 
that for which they have been looking. Compared 
with the philosophy of which they dream, it appears 
mere tinkering. It not only suffers, on its own con- 
fession, from rents and gaps, imperfect cohesion, un- 
solved antinomies, but it is infected by the vice 
inherent in all apologetics — the vice of foregone 
conclusions. It travels towards a predestined end. 
Not content simply to follow reason where reason 
freely leads, it endeavours to cajole it into uttering 
oracles about the universe which shall do no violence 
to what are conceived to be the moral and emotional 
needs of man: a course which may be rational, but 
the rationality of which should (they think) be 
proved, but ought by no means to be assumed. 

Now a criticism like this raises a most important 
question, which, in its full generality, does not per- 
haps receive all the attention it deserves. Since 
belief necessarily precedes the theory of belief, what 
is the proper relation which theory in the making 
should bear to beliefs already made ? It may at 
first seem that any serious attempt to devise a 
philosophy should be preceded not merely by a sus- 
pension of judgment as to the truth of all pre-philo- 
sophic assumptions, but by their complete elimination 



XXVI INTRODUCTION TO 

as factors in the enquiry. From the nature of the 
case, they can as yet be no more than guesses, and 
in the eyes of philosophy a mere guess is as if it were 
not. The examination into what we ought to believe 
should therefore be wholly unaffected by what we 
do in fact believe. The seeker after truth should 
set forth on his speculative voyage neither commit* 
ted to a predetermined course nor bound for any 
port of predilection, and it,should seem to him a far 
smaller evil to lie stagnant and becalmed in univer- 
sal doubt than to move towards the most attractive 
goal on any impulse but that of strictly disinterested 
reason. 

The policy is an attractive one ; but its immediate 
consequence would be a total and absolute sundering 
of theory and practice. In so far as he was theorist, 
the philosopher acting on these principles would, or 
should, regard himself as discredited if he believed 
anything which was not either self-evident or ra- 
tionally involved in that which was self-evident. 
In so far as he was a citizen of the world, he could 
not live ten minutes without acting on some principle 
which still waits in vain for rational proof ; and he 
would do so, be it observed, although (on his own 
principles) there is no probability whatever that when 
he has reached the philosophic theory of which he 
is in quest, it will be in any kind of agreement with 
his pre-philosophic practice. If such a probability 
exists, it should evidently have guided him in his 



THE EIGHTH EDITION XXVil 

investigations, and there would be at once an end of 
the ' clean slate and disinterested reason.* 

For myself indeed I doubt whether this method 
is possible, or, if possible, likely to be fruitful. And 
I am fortified in this conviction by the reflection 
that those to whose constructive suggestions the 
world owes most have favoured a different procedure. 
They have not thus speculated in the void. In 
their search for a world-theory wherein they might 
find repose, they have been guided by some pre-con- 
ceived ideal, borrowed in its main outlines from the 
thought of their age, to which by excisions, modifi- 
cations, or additions, they have sought to give 
definiteness and a rational consistency. I do not, 
of course, suggest that they were advocates speaking 
from a brief, or that their conclusions were explicitly 
formulated before their arguments were devised. 
My meaning rather is that we must think of them 
as working over, and shaping afresh, a body of 
doctrine (empirical, ethical, metaphysical, or meta- 
physico-theological, as the case may be), which in 
the main ihty found, but did not make ; that, judged 
by their practice, they have not regarded ' disinter- 
ested reason ' as the proper instrument of philosophic 
construction; nor have they in fact disdained to 
struggle towards foreseen and wished for conclu- 
sions. 

Is this not plainly true, for example, of such men 
as Locke, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel ? Is it 



XXVlll INTRODUCTION TO 

not confessed in the very name of the * common- 
sense ' school ? Should it not be admitted even of 
thinkers whose conclusions deviate so much from 
the normal as Spinoza or Schopenhauer? I say 
nothing of the many schools of moralists who teach 
an identic morality, though on the most divergent 
grounds, nor of those who, in their endeavours to 
frame a logic of experience assume (quite rightly, in 
my opinion) that the empirical methods which we 
actually employ are those which it is their business 
if possible to justify. It is sufficiently evident that 
their example, if not their profession, amply supports 
my contention. 

This is not the place, however, to labour the 
historic point ; and it is the less necessary because 
I think the reader will probably agree with me that, 
in its complete and consistent purity, this method of 
' disinterested reason * never has been, and probably 
never will be, employed. What has been, and con- 
stantly is, employed, is a partial and bastard adapta- 
tion of it — an adaptation under which ' disinterested 
reason,* or what passes for such, is only exercised for 
purposes of destructive criticism, in arbitrarily se- 
lected portions of the total area of belief. On this 
subject, however, the reader endowed with sufficient 
patience will hear much in the sequel. For the 
present it is only necessary to state, by w^ay of con- 
trast, what I conceive to be the mode in which 
philosophy can most profitably order its course in 



THE EIGHTH EDITION XXIX 

the presence of those living beliefs which precede it 
in order of time, though not in order of logic. 

In my view, then, it should do avowedly, and 
with open eyes, what in fact it has constantly done, 
though silently and with hesitation. It should pro- 
visionally assume, not of course that the general 
body of our beliefs are in conformity with reality, 
but that they represent a stage in the movement 
towards such conformity ; that in particular the 
great presuppositions (such as, for example, the 
uniformity of Nature or the existence of a persistent 
reality capable of being experienced by us but inde- 
pendent of our experience) which form as it were the 
essential skeleton of our working creed, should be 
regarded as matters which it is our business, if 
possible, rationally to establish, but not necessarily 
our business to ignore until such time as our efforts 
shall have succeeded. 

No doubt this method assumes a kind of harmony 
between the knowing Self and the reality to be 
known, which seems only plausible if both are part 
of a common design ; while again, if such a design is 
to be accepted at all, it can hardly be confined to the 
Self as knowing subject, but must embrace other and 
not less notable aspects of our complex personality.^ 

^ It might at first seem as if this postulated harmony might be 
due not to design, but to the material universe having, in the process 
of development, somehow evolved a mind, or rather a multitude of 
minds, in this kind of correspondence with itself. The inadequacy 
of such a theory is shown in a later chapter of this volume. But it 



XXX INTRODUCTION TO 

I may observe that this, and no more than this, is the 
doctrine of * needs ' to which, as expounded in the 
following pages,^ serious objection has been taken by 
a certain number of my critics. 

We have thus again reached the point of view to 
which, by a slightly different route, we had already 
travelled. Whether, taking as our point of departure 
beliefs as they are, we look for the setting which 
shall bind them into the most coherent whole ; or 
whether, in searching out what they ought to be, we 
ask in what direction we had best start our explora- 
tions, we seem equally moved towards the hypothesis 
of a Spiritual origin common to the knower and the 
known. 

Now it will be observed that in both cases the 
creed aimed at is an inclusive one. There is, I 
mean, an admitted desire that no great department 
of knowledge (real or supposed) in which there are 
living and effective beliefs, shall be excluded from 
the final co-ordination. But inasmuch as this final 
co-ordination has not been reached, has indeed, as 
we fear, been scarcely approached, we are not only 
compelled in our gropings after a philosophy to 
accept guidance from beliefs which as yet possess no 

may be here observed that it is not very satisfactory to assume, even 
provisionally, the truth of a full-fledged and very complex scientific 
theory at the starting point of an investigation into the proof of the 
fundamental principles on which that theory, and other empirical 
doctrines, ultimately depend. 
^ See below pp. 243-260. 



THE EIGHTH EDITION XXXI 

rational warranty, but to tolerate some which it 
seems impossible at present to harmonise. 

This seems a hard saying, and it inevitably sug- 
gests the question whether happier results might 
not be obtained by abandoning the attempt at com- 
prehension, and boldly expunging a number of the 
conflicting opinions sufficient to secure immediate 
consistency. 

I am not aware, however, that any operation of 
this kind has so far been attended with the smallest 
success, nor does it seem very easy to justify it in 
the name of reason, unless on examination it turns 
out that the opinions retained have a better claim 
to reasonable acceptance than their rivals, a con- 
tingency more remote than is often supposed. Even 
from the purely empirical point of view, a considera- 
tion of the natural history of knowledge, or what is 
accepted as knowledge, gives fair warning that this 
procedure (were it indeed practicable) would not be 
without its dangers. For knowledge does not grow 
merely by the addition of new discoveries : nor is it 
purified merely by the subtraction of detected errors. 
Truth and falsehood are often too intimately com- 
bined to be dissociated by any simple method of 
filtration. It is by a subtler process that new verities, 
while increasing the sum of our beliefs, act even more 
effectively as a kind of ferment, impressing on those 
that already exist a novel and previousl}^ unsuspected 
character; just as a fresh touch of colour added to a 



XXXll INTRODUCTION TO . 

picture, though it immediately affects but one corner 
of the canvas, may yet change the whole from un- 
likeness to likeness, from confusion to significance. 

Now if this be a faithful representation of what 
actually occurs, it seems plain that to amputate im- 
portant departments of belief in order to free what 
remains from any trace of incoherence, might, even 
if it succeeded, be to hinder, not to promote, the 
cause of truth. Nothing, indeed, which is incoherent 
can be true. But though it cannot be true, it may 
not only contain much truth, but may contain more 
than any system in which both the true and the false 
are abandoned in the premature and, at this stage of 
development, hopeless endeavour after a creed which, 
within however narrow limits, shall be perfectly clear 
and self-consistent. Most half-truths are half-errors ; 
but who is there who would refrain from grasping 
the half-truth although he could not obtain it at a 
less cost than that of taking the half-error with it ? 

There are those who would accept the historical 
application of this doctrine, who would admit that 
logical laxity had often in fact been of service to 
intellectual progress, but would altogether deny the 
propriety of admitting that such a theory could have 
any practical bearing on their own case. They would 
draw a distinction between a detected and an unde- 
tected incoherence. The unconscious acquiescence 
in the latter may happen to aid the cause of knowl- 
edge : the conscious acquiescence in the former must 



THE EIGHTH EDITION XXXlll 

be a sin against reason. I do not think the distinc- 
tion will hold. Our business is to reach as much 
truth as we can ; and neither observation nor reflec- 
tion^ give any countenance to the notion that this 
end will best be attained by turning the merely 
critical understanding into the undisputed arbiter in 
all matters of belief. Its importance for the clarifi- 
cation of knowledge cannot indeed be exaggerated. 
As a commentator it should be above control. As 
cross-examiner its rights should be unlimited. But 
it cannot arrogate to itself the duties of a final court 
of appeal. Should it, for example, show, as I think 
it does, that neither the common-sense views of ordi- 
nary men, nor the modification of these on which 
science proceeds, nor the elaborated systems of 
metaphysics, are more than temporary resting-places, 
seen to be insecure almost as soon as they are occu- 
pied, yet we must still hold them to be stages on 
a journey towards something better than a futile 
scepticism which, were it possible in practice, would 
be ruinous alike to every form of conviction, whether 
scientific, ethical, or religious. When that journey 
is accomplished, but only then, can we hope that all 
difficulties will be smoothed away, all anomalies be 
reconciled, and the certainty and rational interde- 
pendence of all its parts made manifest in the trans- 
parent Whole of Knowledge. 

I have now endeavoured to present in isolation, 

^See this Introduction, aiite^ p. xi. 



XXXIV INTRODUCTION 

and with all the lucidity consistent with brevity, the 
fundamental ideas which oinderlie the various dis- 
cussions contained in the following Essay. For their 
development and illustration I must of course refer 
to the work itself ; and it may well happen that this 
preliminary treatment of them will not greatly pre- 
dispose some of my readers in their favour. But 
however this may be, I would fain hope that, whether 
they be approved or disapproved, they cannot, after 
what has been said, any longer be easily misunder- 
stood. 

Whittingehame, 1901. 



NOTE 

Part II., Chapter II., of the following Essay ap- 
peared in 1893 in the October number of 'Mind.' 
Part I., Chapter I., was delivered as a Lecture to 
the Ethical Society of Cambridge in the spring of 
1893, and subsequently appeared in the July number 
of the * International Journal of Ethics ' in the pres- 
ent year. Though published separately, both these 
chapters were originally written for the present vol- 
ume. The references to ' Philosophic Doubt' which 
occur from time to time in the Notes, especially at 
the beginning of Part II., are to the only edition of 
that book which has as yet been published. It is 
now out of print, and copies are not easy to procure ; 
but if I have time to prepare a new edition, care will 
be taken to prevent any confusion which might arise 
from a different numbering of the chapters. 

I desire to acknowledge the kindness of those 
who have read through the proof - sheets of these 
Notes and made suggestions upon them. This 
somewhat ungrateful labour was undertaken by my 
friends, the Rev. E. S. Talbot, Professor Andrew 
Seth, the Rev. James Robertson, and last, but very 



XX XVI NOTE 

far from least, my brother, Mr. G. W. Balfour, M.P., 
and my brother-in-law. Professor Henry Sidgwick. 
None of these gentlemen are, of course, in any way 
responsible for the views herein advocated, with 
which some of them, indeed, by no means agree. I 
am the more beholden to them for the assistance 
they have been good enough to render me. 

A. J. B. 

Whittingehame, September 1894. 



PRELIMINARY 

As its title imports, the following Essay is intended 
to serve as an Introduction to the Study of Theol- 
ogy. The word ' Introduction,* however, is ambig- 
uous ; and in order that the reader may be as little 
disappointed as possible with the contents of the 
book, the sense in which I here use it must be first 
explained. Sometimes, by an Introduction to a sub- 
ject is meant a brief survey of its leading principles 
— a first initiation, as it were, into its methods and 
results. For such a task, however, in the case of 
Theology I have no qualifications. With the growth 
of knowledge Theology has enlarged its borders 
until it has included subjects about which even the 
most accomplished theologian of past ages did not 
greatly concern himself. To the Patristic, Dog- 
matic, and Controversial learning which has always 
been required, the theologian of to-day must add 
knowledge at first hand of the complex historical, 
antiquarian, and critical problems presented by the 
Old and New Testaments, and of the vast and daily 
increasing literature which has grown up around 
them. He must have a sufficient acquaintance with 
the comparative history of religions ; and in addi- 
tion to all this, he must be competent to deal with 



2 PRELIMINARY 

those scientific and philosophical questions which 
have a more profound and permanent bearing on 
Theology even than the results of critical and his- 
torical scholarship. 

Whether any single individual is fully compe- 
tent either to acquire or successfully to manipulate 
so formidable an apparatus of learning, I do not 
know. But in any case I am very far indeed from 
being even among that not inconsiderable number 
who are qualified to put the reader in the way of 
profitably cultivating some portion of this vast and 
always increasing field of research. The following 
pages, therefore, scarcely claim to deal with the sub- 
stance of Theology at all. They are in the narrow- 
est sense of the word an ' introduction ' to it. They 
deal for the most part with preliminaries ; and it is 
only towards the end of the volume, where the Intro- 
duction begins insensibly to merge into that which it 
is designed to introduce, that purely theological doc- 
trines are mentioned, except by way of illustration. 

Although what follows might thus be fitly de- 
scribed as ' Considerations preliminary to a study of 
Theology,' I do not think the subjects dealt with 
are less important on that account. For, in truth, 
the decisive battles of Theology are fought beyond 
its frontiers. It is not over purely religious contro- 
versies that the cause of Religion is lost or won. 
The judgments we shall form upon its special prob- 
lems are commonly settled for us by our general 
mode of looking at the Universe ; and this again, in 



PRELIMINARY 3 

SO far as it is determined by arguments at all, is 
determined by arguments of so wide a scope that 
they can seldom be claimed as more nearly con- 
cerned with Theology than with the philosophy of 
Science or of Ethics. 

My object, then, is to recommend a particular 
way of looking at the World - problems, which, 
whether we like it or not, we are compelled to face. 
I wish, if I can, to lead the reader up to a point of 
view whence the small fragments of the Infinite 
Whole, of which we are able to obtain a glimpse, 
may appear to us in their true relative proportions. 
This is, therefore, no work of ' Apologetics ' in the 
ordinary sense of that Avord. Theological doctrines 
are not taken up in turn and defended from current 
objections ; nor is there any endeavour here made 
specifically to solve the ' doubts ' or allay the ' diffi- 
culties ' which in this, as in every other, age perplex 
the minds of a certain number of religious persons. 
Yet, as I think that perhaps the greater number of 
these doubts and difficulties would never even pre- 
sent themselves in that character were it not for a 
certain superficiality and one-sidedness in our habit- 
ual manner of considering the wider problems of 
belief, I cannot help entertaining the hope that by 
what is here said the Avork of the Apologist proper 
may indirectly be furthered. 

It is a natural, if not an absolutely necessary 
consequence of this plan, that the subjects alluded 
to in the following pages are, as a rule, more secular 



4 PRELIMINARY 

than the title of the book might perhaps at first 
suggest, and also that the treatment of some of 
them has been brief even to meagreness. If the 
reader is tempted to complain of the extreme con- 
ciseness with which some topics of the greatest im- 
portance are touched on, and the apparent irrele- 
vance with which others have been introduced, I 
hope he will reserve his judgment until he has read 
to the end, should his patience hold out so long. If 
he then thinks that the ' particular way of looking 
at the World-problems ' which this book is intended 
to recommend is not rendered clearer by any por- 
tion of what has been written, I shall be open to his 
criticism ; but not otherwise. What I have tried to 
do is not to write a monograph, or a series of mono- 
graphs, upon Theology, but to delineate, and, if 
possible, to recommend, a certain attitude of mind ; 
and I hope that in carrying out this less ambitious 
scheme I have put in few touches that were super- 
fluous and left out none that were necessary. 

If it be asked, * For whom is this book intended?' 
I answer, that it is intended for the general body of 
readers interested in such subjects rather than for 
the specialist in Philosophy. I do not, of course, 
mean that I have either desired or been able to 
avoid questions which in essence are strictly philo- 
sophical. Such an attempt would have been wholly 
absurd. But no knowledge either of the history or 
the technicalities of Philosophy is assumed in the 
reader, nor do I believe that there is any train of 



PRELIMINARY 5 

thought here suggested which, if he thinks it worth 
his while, he will have the least difficulty in follow- 
ing. He may, and very likely will, find objection 
both to the substance of my arguments and their 
form. But I shall be disappointed if, in addition to 
their other deficiencies, he finds them unintelligible 
or even obscure.^ 

There is one more point to be explained before 
these prefatory remarks are brought to a conclusion. 
In order that the views here advocated may be seen 
in the highest relief, it is convenient to exhibit them 
against the background of some other and contrast- 
ed system of thought. What system shall that be ? 
In Germany the philosophies of Kant and his suc- 
cessors may be (I know not whether they are) 
matters of such common knowledge that they fit- 
tingly supply a standard of reference, by the aid of 
which the relative positions of other and more or 
less differing systems may be conveniently deter- 
mined. As to whether this state of things, if it 
anywhere exists, is desirable or not, I offer no opinion. 
But I am very sure that it does not at present exist 
in any English-speaking community, and probably 
never Avill, until the ideas of these speculative giants 
are throughout rethought by Englishmen, and 
reproduced in a shape which ordinary Englishmen 
will consent to assimilate. Until this occurs Tran- 
scendental Idealism must continue to be what it is 

* These observations must not be taken as applying to Part II., 
Chapter II., which the general reader is recommended to omit. 



PRELIMINARY 

now — the intellectual possession of a small minor- 
ity of philosophical specialists. Philosophy cannot, 
under existing conditions, become, like Science, ab- 
solutely international. There is in matters specu- 
lative, as in matters poetical, a certain amount of 
natural protection for the home-producer, which 
commentators and translators seem unable alto- 
gether to overcome. 

Though, therefore, I have devoted a chapter to 
the consideration of Transcendental Idealism as rep- 
resented in some recent English writings, it is not 
with overt or tacit reference to that system that I 
have arranged the material of the following Essay. 

1 have, on the contrary, selected a system with which 

I am in much less sympathy, but which under many 

names numbers a formidable following, and is in 

reality the only system which ultimately profits by 

any defeats which Theology may sustain, or which 

may be counted on to flood the spaces from which 

the tide of Religion has receded. Agnosticism, 

Positivism, Empiricism, have all been used more or 

less correctly to describe this scheme of thought; 

though in the following pages, for reasons witli 

which it is not necessary to trouble the reader, the 

term which I shall commonly employ is Naturalism.* 

* n This sentence has greatly excited the wrath of Mr. Frederic 
Harrison. But whether his indignation is directed against my de- 
scription of the meaning in which the word ' Positivism ' is frequently 
used, or against that meaning itself, is not quite so clear. If my 
description is accurate, I see no reason why he should be angry with 
me ; and that it is accurate seems beyond doubt. I commend to Mr. 



PRELIMINARY 7 

But whatever the name selected, the thing itself is 
sufficiently easy to describe. For its leading doctrines 
are that we may know ' phenomena ' ^ and the laws 

Harrison's attention the following passage from John Mill's volume 
on ' Auguste Comte and Positivism : ' * ' The character by which he 
(Comte) defines Positive Philosophy is the following: We have no 
knowledge of anything but Phenomena ; and our knowledge of 
Phenomena is relative, not absolute. . . . The laws of Phenomena 
are all we know respecting them. Their essential nature and their 
ultimate causes, either efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable 
to us.' 

Mill's account of the ' character by which Comte defines Positive 
Philosophy ' (which, as the reader will see, is almost identical with my 
account of Naturalism) may, in Mr. Harrison's elegant language,! be 
a ' coagulated clot of confusions and mis-statements,' but passages of 
a like import (which could easily be multiplied) fully account for the 
use of the term ' Positivism ' to which I have referred in the text. 
' Positivism,' says Mr. Harrison, ' is the religion of humanity resting 
on the philosophy of human nature. '| Very possibly ; but if so, 
Positivism as described by Mr. Harrison is a strangely different thing 
from ' Positive Philosophy ' as described by John Mill ; and it is 
hardly to be wondered at that these words are sometimes employed 
in a manner displeasing to the religious sect of which Mr. Harrison 
is so distinguished a member. This, however, is no fault of mine. 

Let me add that Mr. Harrison's ill humour may in part be due to 
his supposing that I regard Positivists as being ipso facto materialists. 
I need not say to the attentive reader of the following essay that I do 
nothing of the sort. 3 

1 1 feel that explanation, and perhaps apology, is due for this use 
of the word ' phenomena.' In its proper sense the term implies, I 
suppose, that whkh appears, as distinguished from something, pre- 
sumably more real, which does not appear. I neither use it as carry- 
ing this metaphysical implication, nor do I restrict it to things which 
appear, or even to things which cotdd appear to beings endowed with 
senses like ours. The ether, for instance, though it is impossible that 
we should ever know it except by its effects, I should call a phenom- 

* P. 6, ed. 1865. t Positivist Revieto, No. 29, p. 79. 

X Positivist Review for May 1895, p. 79. 



8 PRELIMINARY 

by which they are connected, but nothing more. 
* More' there may or may not be ; but if it exists we 
can never apprehend it : and whatever the World 
may be *in its reality' (supposing- such an expression 
to be otherwise than meaningless), the World for us, 
the World with which alone we are concerned, or of 
which alone we can have any cognisance, is that 
World which is revealed to us through perception, 
internal and external, and which is the subject-matter 
of the Natural Sciences. Here, and here only, are 
we on firm ground. Here, and here only, can we 
discover anything which deserves to be described as 
Knowledge. Here, and here only, may we profitably 
exercise our reason or gather the fruits of Wisdom. 
Such, in rough outline, is Naturalism. My first 
task will be the preparatory one of examining certain 
of its consequences in various departments of human 
thought and emotion ; and to this in the next four 
chapters I proceed to devote myself. 

enon. The coagulation of nebular meteors into suns and planets I 
should call a phenomenon, though nobody may have existed to whom 
it could appear. Roughly speaking, things and events, the general 
subject-matter of Natural Science, are what I endeavour to indicate by 
a term for which, as thus used, there is, unfortunately, no substitute, 
however little the meaning which I give to it can be etymologically 
justified. 

While I am on the subject of definitions, it may be as well to say 
that, generally speaking, I distinguish between Philosophy and Meta- 
physics. To Philosophy I give an epistemological significance. I 
regard it as the systematic exposition of our grounds of knowledge. 
Thus, the philosophy of Religion or the philosophy of Science would 
mean the theoretic justification of our theological or scientific beliefs. 
By Metaphysics, on the other hand, I usually mean the knowledge 
that we have, or suppose ourselves to have, respecting realities which 
are not phenomenal, e.g. God, and the Soul. 



PART I 

SOME CONSEQUENCES OF BELIEF 



CHAPTER I 

NATURALISM AND ETHICS 



The two subjects on which the professors of every 
creed, theological and anti-theological, seem least 
anxious to differ, are the general substance of the 
Moral Law, and the character of the sentiments 
with which it should be regarded. That it is 
worthy of all reverence ; that it demands our 
ungrudging submission ; and that we owe it not 
merely obedience, but love — these are common- 
places which the preachers of all schools vie with 
each other in proclaiming. And they are certainly 
right. Morality is more than a bare code of laws, 
than a catalogue raisonne of things to be done or 
left undone. Were it otherwise, we must change 
something more important than the mere customa- 
ry language of exhortation. The old ideals of the 
world would have to be uprooted, and no new ones 
could spring up and flourish in their stead ; the very- 
soil on which they grew would be sterilised, and the 
phrases in which all that has hitherto been regard- 
ed as best and noblest in human life has been ex- 
pressed, nay, the words ' best ' and * noblest ' them- 



12 NATURALISM AND ETHICS 

selves, would become as foolish and unmeaning as 
the incantation of a forgotten superstition. 

This unanimity, familiar though it be, is surely 
very remarkable. And it is the more remarkable 
because the unanimity prevails only as to con- 
clusions, and is accompanied by the widest diver- 
gence of opinion with regard to the premises on 
which these conclusions are supposed to be founded. 
Nothing but habit could blind us to the strangeness 
of the fact that the man who believes that morality 
is based on a priori principles, and the man who 
believes it to be based on the commands of God, 
the transcendentalist, the theologian, the mystic, 
and the evolutionist, should be pretty well at 
one both as to what morality teaches, and as to 
the sentiments with which its teaching should be 
regarded. 

It is not my business in this place to examine 
the Philosophy of Morals, or to find an answer to 
the charge which this suspicious harmony of opinion 
among various schools of moralists appears to 
suggest, namely, that in their speculations they have 
taken current morality for granted, and have squared 
their proofs to their conclusions, and not their con- 
clusions to their proofs. I desire now rather to 
direct the reader's attention to certain questions 
relating to the origin of ethical systems, not to their 
justification ; to the natural history of morals, not to 
its philosophy ; to the place which the moral law 
occupies in the general chain of causes and effects^ 



NATURALISM AND ETHICS 1 3 

not to the nature of its claim on the unquestioning 
obedience of mankind. I am aware, of course, that 
many persons have been, and are, of opinion that 
these two sets of questions are not merely related, 
but identical ; that the validity of a command 
depends only on the source from which it springs ; 
and that in the investigation into the character and 
authority of this source consists the principal busi- 
ness of the moral philosopher. I am not concerned 
here to controvert this theory, though, as thus 
stated, I do not agree with it. It will be sufficient 
if I lay down two propositions of a much less- 
dubious character: — (i) That, practically, human 
beings being what they are, no moral code can be 
effective which does not inspire, in those who are 
asked to obey it, emotions of reverence ; and (2) that, 
practically, the capacity of any code to excite this or 
any other elevated emotion cannot be wholly inde- 
pendent of the origin from which those who accept 
that code suppose it to emanate.^ 

Now what, according to the naturalistic creed, is 
the origin of the generally accepted, or, indeed, of any 
other possible, moral law? What position does it 
occupy in the great web of interdependent phenom- 
ena by which the knowable * Whole ' is on this 
hypothesis constituted ? The answer is plain : as 

^ These are statements, it will be noted, not relating to ethics 
proper. They have nothing to do either with the contents of the 
moral law or with its validity ; and if we are to class them as be- 
longing to any special department of knowledge at all, it is to psy- 
chology or anthropology that they should in strictness be assigned. 



14 NATURALISM AND ETHICS 

life is but a petty episode in the history of the 
universe ; as feeling is an attribute of only a frac- 
tion of things that live, so moral sentiments and the 
apprehension of moral rules are found in but an 
insignificant minority of things that feel. They are 
not, so to speak, among the necessities of Nature ; no 
great spaces are marked out for their accommodation; 
were they to vanish to-morrow, the great machine 
would move on with no noticeable variation ; the 
sum of realities would not suffer sensible diminution; 
the organic world itself would scarcely mark the 
change. A few highly developed mammals, and 
chiefest among these man, would lose instincts and 
beliefs which have proved of considerable value in 
the struggle for existence, if not between individuals, 
at least between tribes and species. But put it at 
the highest, we can say no more than that there 
would be a great diminution of human happiness, 
that civilisation would become difficult or impossible, 
and that the ' higher ' races might even succumb and 
disappear. 

These are considerations which to the ' higher * 
races themselves may seem not unimportant, how- 
ever trifling to the universe at large. But let it be 
noted that every one of these propositions can be 
asserted with equal or greater assurance of all the 
bodily appetites, and of many of the vulgarest forms 
of desire and ambition. On most of the processes, in- 
deed, by which consciousness and life are maintained 
in the individual and perpetuated in the race we are 



NATURALISM AND ETHICS 1 5 

never consulted ; of their intimate character we are 
for the most part totally ignorant, and no one is in 
any case asked to consider them with any other 
emotion than that of enlightened curiosity. But in 
the few and simple instances in which our co-opera- 
tion is required, it is obtained through the stimulus 
supplied by appetite and disgust, pleasure and pain, 
instinct, reason, and morality ; and it is hard to see, 
on the naturalistic hypothesis, whence any one of 
these various natural agents is to derive a dignity or 
a consideration not shared by all the others, why 
morality should be put above appetite, or reason 
above pleasure. 

It may, perhaps, be replied that the sentiments 
with which we choose to regard any set of actions 
or motives do not require special justification, that 
there is no disputing about this any more than about 
other questions of ' taste,' and that, as a matter of 
fact, the persons who take a strictly naturalistic view 
of man and of the universe are often ^ the loudest 
and not the least sincere in the homage they pay to 
the 'majesty of the moral law.* This is, no doubt, 
perfectly true ; but it does not meet the real diffi- 
culty. I am not contending that sentiments of the 
kind referred to may not be, and are not, frequently 
entertained by persons of all shades of philosophical 
or theological opinion. My point is, that in the case 
of those holding the naturalistic creed the sentiments 
and the creed are antagonistic ; and that the more 
clearly the creed is grasped, the more thoroughly 



16 NATURALISM AND ETHICS 

the intellect is saturated with its essential teaching, 
the more certain are the sentiments thus violently 
and unnaturally associated with it to languish or to 
die. 

For not only does there seem to be no ground, 
from the point of view of biology, for drawing a 
distinction in favour of any of the processes, physio- 
logical or psychological, by which the individual or 
the race is benefited ; not only are we bound to 
consider the coarsest appetites, the most calculating 
selfishness, and the most devoted heroism, as all 
sprung from analogous causes and all evolved for 
similar objects, but we can hardly doubt that the 
august sentiments which cling to the ideas of duty 
and sacrifice are nothing better than a device of 
Nature to trick us into the performance of altruistic 
actions.^ The working ant expends its life in labour- 
ing, with more than maternal devotion, for a prog- 
eny not its own, and, so far as the race of ants is 
concerned, doubtless it does well. Instinct, the in- 
herited impulse to follow a certain course with no 
developed consciousness of its final goal, is here the 
instrument selected by Nature to attain her ends. 
But in the case of man, more flexible if less certain 
methods have to be employed. Does conscience, 
in bidding us to do or to refrain, speak with an 
authority from Avhich there seems no appeal ? Does 

^ It is scarcely necessary to state that by this phrase I do not 
wish to suggest that Biology necessarily is teleological. Naturalism 
of course cannot be. 



NATURALISM AND ETHICS \^ 

our blood tingle at the narrative of some great 
deed ? Do courage and self-surrender extort our 
passionate sympathy, and invite, however vainly, 
our halting imitation? Does that which is noble 
attract even the least noble, and that which is base 
repel even the basest ? Nay, have the words ' noble ' 
and ' base ' a meaning for us at all ? If so, it is from 
no essential and immutable quality in the deeds 
themselves. It is because, in the struggle for ex- 
istence, the altruistic virtues are an advantage to 
the family, the tribe, or the nation, but not always 
an advantage to the individual ; it is because man 
comes into the world richly endowed with the 
inheritance of self-regarding instincts and appetites 
required by his animal progenitors, but poor indeed 
in any inbred inclination to the unselfishness neces- 
sary to the well-being of the society in which he 
lives ; it is because in no other way can the original 
impulses be displaced by those of late growth to the 
degree required by public utility, that Nature, in- 
different to our happiness, indifferent to our morals, 
but sedulous of our survival, commends disinterested 
virtue to our practice by decking it out in all the 
splendour which the specifically ethical sentiments 
alone are capable of supplying. Could we imagine 
the chronological order of the evolutionary process 
reversed : if courage and abnegation had been the 
qualities first needed, earliest developed, and there- 
fore most deeply rooted in the ancestral organism ; 
while selfishness, cowardice, greediness, and lust 



t8 naturalism and ethics 

represented impulses required only at a later stage 
of physical and intellectual development, doubtless 
we should find the * elevated ' emotions which now 
crystallise round the first set of attributes transferred 
without alteration or amendment to the second ; the 
preacher would expend his eloquence in warning 
us against excessive indulgence in deeds of self- 
immolation, to which, like the * worker ' ant, we 
should be driven by inherited instinct, and in ex. 
horting us to the performance of actions and the 
cultivation of habits from which we now, unfortu- 
nately, find it only too difficult to abstain. 

Kant, as we all know, compared the Moral Law 
to the starry heavens, and found them both sublime. 
It would, on the naturalistic hypothesis, be more 
appropriate to compare it to the protective blotches 
on the beetle's back, and to find them both ingenious. 
But how on this view is the ' beauty of holiness ' to 
retain its lustre in the minds of those who know so 
much of its pedigree ? In despite of theories, man- 
kind — even instructed mankind — may, indeed, long 
preserve uninjured sentiments which they have 
learned in their most impressionable years from 
those they love best ; but if, while they are being 
taught the supremacy of conscience and the austere 
majesty of duty, they are also to be taught that 
these sentiments and beliefs are merely samples of 
the complicated contrivances, many of them mean 
and many of them disgusting, wrought into the 
physical or into the social organism by the shaping 



NATURALISM AND ETHICS IQ 

forces of selection and elimination, assuredly much 
of the efficacy of these moral lessons will be de- 
stroyed, and the contradiction between ethical senti- 
ment and naturalistic theory will remain intrusive 
and perplexing-, a constant stumbling-block to those 
who endeavour to combine in one harmonious creed 
the bare explanations of Biology and the lofty claims 
of Ethics.^ 

II 

Unfortunately for my reader, it is not possible 
wholly to omit from this section some references to 
the questionings which cluster round the time-worn 
debate on Determinism and Free Will ; but my re- 
marks will be brief, and as little tedious as may be. 

^ It may perhaps be thought that in this section I have too confi- 
dently assumed that moraUty, or, more strictly, the moral sentiments 
(including among these the feeling of authority which attaches to 
ethical imperatives), are due to the working of natural selection. 
I have no desire to dogmatise on a subject on which it is the busi- 
ness of the biologist and anthropologist to pronounce. But it 
seems difficult to believe that natural selection should not have had 
the most important share in producing and making permanent 
things so obviously useful. If the reader prefers to take the op- 
posite view, and to regard moral sentiments as ' accidental,' he may 
do so, without on that account being obliged to differ from my 
general argument. He will then, of course, class moral sentiments 
with the aesthetic emotions dealt with in the next chapter. 

Of course I make no attempt to trace the causes of the variations 
on which selective action has worked, nor to distinguish between 
the moral sentiments, an inclination to or an aptitude for which has 
been bred into the physical organism of man or some races of 
men, and those which have been wrought only into the social organ- 
ism of the family, the tribe, or the State. 



20 NATURALISM AND ETHICS 

I have nothing here to do with the truth or un- 
truth of either of the contending theories. It is 
sufficient to remind the reader that on the naturalis- 
tic view, at least, free will is an absurdity, and that 
those who hold that view are bound to believe that 
every decision at which mankind have arrived, and 
every consequent action which they have performed, 
was implicitly determined by the quantity and dis- 
tribution of the various forms of matter and energy 
which preceded the birth of the solar system. The 
fact, no doubt, remains ^ that every individual, while 
balancing between two courses, is under the inevi- 
table impression that he is at liberty to pursue either, 
and that it depends upon 'himself and himself 
alone, ' himself ' as distinguished from his character, 
his desires, his surroundings, and his antecedents, 
which of the offered alternatives he will elect to 
pursue. I do not know that any explanation has 
been proposed of what, on the naturalistic hypothe- 
sis, we must regard as a singular illusion. I vent- 
ure with some diffidence to suggest, as a theory pro- 
visionally adequate, perhaps, for scientific purposes, 
that the phenomenon is due to the same cause as so 
many other beneficent oddities in the organic world, 
namely, to natural selection. To an animal with no 
self-consciousness a sense of freedom would evidently 
be unnecessary, if not, indeed, absolutely unmeaning. 
But as soon as self-consciousness is developed, as 

'At least, so it seems to me. There are, however, eminent 
psychologists who differ. 



NATURALISM AND ETHICS 21 

soon as man begins to reflect, however crudely and 
imperfectly, upon himself and the world in which he 
lives, then deliberation, volition, and the sense of re- 
sponsibility become wheels in the ordinary machinery 
by which species-preserving actions are produced; 
and as these psychological states would be weakened 
or neutralised if they were accompanied by the imme- 
diate consci4)usness that they were as rigidly deter- 
mined by thSir antecedents as any other effects by 
any other causes, benevolent Nature steps in, and by 
a process of selective slaughter makes the conscious- 
ness in such circumstances practically impossible. 
The spectacle of all mankind suffering under the 
delusion that in their decision they are free, when, 
as a matter of fact, they are nothing of the kind, 
must certainly appear extremely ludicrous to any 
superior observer, were it possible to conceive, on 
the naturalistic hypothesis, that such observers 
should exist ; and the comedy could not be other- 
wise than greatly relieved and heightened by the 
performances of the small sect of philosophers who, 
knowing perfectly as an abstract truth that freedom 
is an absurdity, yet in moments of balance and 
deliberation invariably conceive themselves to pos- 
sess it, just as if they were savages or idealists. 

The roots of a superstition so ineradicable must 
lie deep in the groundwork of our inherited organ- 
ism, and must, if not now, at least in the first begin- 
ning of self-consciousness, have been essential to the 
welfare of the race which entertained it. Yet it 



22 NATURALISM AND ETHICS 

may, perhaps, be thought that this requires us to 
attribute to the dawn of intelligence ideas which are 
notoriously of late development ; and that as the 
primitive man knew nothing of ' invariable sequences ' 
or * universal causation,' he could in nowise be em- 
barrassed in the struggle for existence by recognising 
that he and his proceedings were as absolutely deter- 
mined by their antecedents as sticks and stones. It 
is, of course, true that in any formal or philosophical 
shape such ideas would be as remote from the intel- 
ligence of the savage as the differential calculus. 
But it can, nevertheless, hardly be denied that, in 
some shape or other, there must be implicitly present 
to his consciousness the sense of freedom, since his 
fetichism largely consists in attributing to inanimate 
objects the spontaneity which he finds in himself ; 
and it seems equally certain that the sense, I will 
not say of constraint, but of inevitableness, would be 
as embarrassing to a savage in the act of choice as 
it would to his more cultivated descendant, and 
would be not less productive of that moral im- 
poverishment which, as I proceed briefly to point 
out. Determinism is calculated to produce.^ 

^ It seems to be regarded as quite simple and natural that this 
attribution of human spontaneity to inanimate objects should be the 
first stage in the interpretation of the external world, and that it 
should be only after the uniformity of material Nature had been con- 
clusively established by long and laborious experience that the same 
principles were applied to the inner experience of man himself. But, 
in truth, unless man in the very earliest stages of his development had 
believed himself to be free, precisely the opposite order of discovery 
might have been anticipated. Even now our means of external 



NATURALISM AND ETHICS 23 

And here I am anxious to avoid any appearance 
of the exaggeration which, as I think, has sometimes 
characterised discussions upon this subject. I admit 
that there is nothing in the theory of determinism 
which need modify the substance of the moral law. 
That which duty prescribes, or the * Practical Rea^ 
son * recommends, is equally prescribed and recom- 
mended whether our actual decisions are or are not 
irrevocably bound by a causal chain which reaches 
back in unbroken retrogression through a limitless 
past. It may also be admitted that no argument 

investigation are so imperfect that it is rather a stretch of lan- 
guage to say that the theory of uniformity is in accordance with 
experience, much less that it is established by it. On the contrary, 
the more refined are our experiments, the more elaborate are our 
precautions, the more difficult it is to obtain results absolutely identi- 
cal with each other, qualitatively as well as quantitatively. So far, 
therefore, as mere observation goes. Nature seems to be always 
aiming at a uniformity which she never quite succeeds in attaining ; 
and though it is no doubt true that the differences are due to errors 
in the observations and not to errors in Nature, this manifestly cannot 
be proved by the observations themselves, but only by a theory 
established independently of the observations, and by which these 
may be corrected and interpreted. But a man's ov^m motives for 
acting in a particular way at a particular time are simple compared 
with the complexities of the material world, and to himself at least 
might be known (one would suppose) with reasonable certainty. 
Here, then (were it not for the inveterate illusion, old as self- 
consciousness itself, that at the moment of choice no uniformity of 
antecedents need insure a uniformity of consequences) would have 
been the natural starting-point and suggestion of a theory of causa- 
tion which, as experience ripened and knowledge grew, might have 
gradually extended itself to the universe at large. Man would, in 
fact, have had nothing more to do than to apply to the chaotic com- 
plex of the macrocosm the principles of rigid and unchanging law by 
which he had discovered the microcosm to be governed. 



24 NATURALISM AND ETHICS 

against good resolutions or virtuous endeavours 
can fairly be founded upon necessitarian doctrines. 
No doubt he who makes either good resolutions or 
virtuous endeavours does so (on the determinist 
theory) because he could not do otherwise ; but 
none the less may these play an important part 
among the antecedents by which moral actions are 
ultimately produced. An even stronger admission 
may, I think, be properly made. There is a fatalis- 
tic temper of mind found in some of the greatest 
men of action, religious and irreligious, in which the 
sense that all that happens is fore-ordained does in 
no way weaken the energy of volition, but only 
adds a finer temper to the courage. It nevertheless 
remains the fact that the persistent realisation of 
the doctrine that voluntary decisions are as com- 
pletely determined by external and (if you go far 
enough back) by material conditions as involuntary 
ones, does really conflict with the sense of personal 
responsibility, and that with the sense of personal 
responsibility is bound up the moral will. Nor is 
this all. It may be a small matter that determinism 
should render it thoroughly irrational to feel right- 
eous indignation at the misconduct of other people. 
It cannot be wholly without importance that it 
should render it equally irrational to feel righteous 
indignation at our own. Self-condemnation, repent- 
ance, remorse, and the whole train of cognate emo- 
tions, are really so useful for the promotion of virt- 
ue that it is a pity to find them at a stroke thus 



NATURALISM AND ETHICS 2$ 

deprived of all reasonable foundation, and reduced, 
if they are to survive at all, to the position of ami- 
able but unintelligent weaknesses. It is clear, more- 
over, that these emotions, if they are to fall, will not 
fall alone. What is to become of moral admiration? 
The virtuous man will, indeed, continue to deserve 
and to receive admiration of a certain kind — the 
admiration, namely, which we justly accord to a 
well-made machine ; but this is a very different senti- 
ment from that at present evoked by the heroic or 
the saintly ; and it is, therefore, much to be feared 
that, at least in the region of the higher feelings, 
the world will be no great gainer by the effective 
spread of sound naturalistic doctrine. 

No doubt this conflict between a creed which 
claims intellectual assent and emotions which have 
their root and justification in beliefs which are 
dehberately rejected, is greatly mitigated by the 
precious faculty which the human race enjoys of 
quietly ignoring the logical consequences of its own 
accepted theories. If the abstract reason by which 
such theories are contrived always ended in pro- 
ducing a practice corresponding to them, natural 
selection would long ago have killed off all those 
who possessed abstract reason. If a complete 
accord between practice and speculation were 
required of us, philosophers would long ago have 
been eliminated. Nevertheless, the persistent con- 
flict between that which is thought to be true, 
and that which is felt to be noble and of good 



26 NATURALISM AND ETHICS 

report, not only produces a sense of moral unrest in 
the individual, but makes it impossible for us to 
avoid the conclusion that the creed which leads to 
such results is, somehow, unsuited for ' such beings 
as we are in such a world as ours.' 



Ill 

There is thus an incongruity between the senti- 
ments subservient to morality, and the naturalistic 
account of their origin. It remains to inquire 
whether any better harmony prevails between the 
demands of the ethical imagination and what 
Naturalism tells us concerning the final goal of all 
human endeavour. 

This is plainly not a question of small or sub- 
sidiary importance, though it is one which I shall 
make no attempt to treat with anything like com- 
pleteness. Two only of these ethical demands is it 
necessary, indeed, that I should here refer to : that 
which requires the ends prescribed by morality to 
be consistent ; and that which requires them to be 
adequate. Can we say that either one or the other 
is of a kind which the naturalistic theory is able to 
satisfy ? 

The first of these questions — that relating to 
consistency — will no doubt be dealt with in different 
ways by various schools of moralists ; but by what- 
ever path they travel, all should arrive at a negative 
conclusion. Those who hold as I do. that * reason- 



NATURALISM AND ETHICS 2/ 

able self-love' has a legitimate position among 
ethical ends ; that as a matter of fact it is a virtue 
wholly incompatible with what is commonly called 
selfishness ; and that society suffers not from having 
too much of it, but from having too little, will 
probably take the view that, until the world under- 
goes a very remarkable transformation, a complete 
harmony between ' egoism ' and ' altruism,' between 
the pursuit of the highest happiness for one's self 
and the highest happiness for other people, can 
never.be provided by a creed which refuses to 
admit that the deeds done and the character 
formed in this life can flow over into another, 
and there permit a reconciliation and an adjust- 
ment between the conflicting principles which are 
not always possible here. To those, again, who 
hold (as I think, erroneously), both that the 
'greatest happiness of the greatest number 'is the 
right end of action, and also that, as a matter of fact, 
every agent invariably pursues his own, a heaven 
and a hell, which should make it certain that 
principle and interest were always in agreement, 
would seem almost a necessity. Not otherwise, 
neither by education, public opinion, nor positive 
law, can there be any assured harmony produced 
betw^een that which man must do by the constitution 
of his will, and that which he ought to do according 
to the promptings of his conscience. On the other 
hand, it must be acknowledged that those moralists 
who are of opinion that ' altruistic ' ends alone are 



28 NATURALISM AND ETHICS 

worthy of being described as moral, and that man is 
not incapable of pursuing them without any self- 
regarding motives, require no future life to eke out 
their practical system. But even they would prob- 
ably not be unwilling to admit, with the rest of the 
world, that there is something jarring to the moral 
sense in a comparison between the distribution of 
happiness and the distribution of virtue, and that no 
better mitigation of the difficulty has yet been 
suggested than that which is provided by a system 
of ' rewards and punishments,' impossible in any uni- 
verse constructed on strictly naturalistic principles. 
With this bare indication of some of the points 
which naturally suggest themselves in connection 
with the first question suggested above, I pass on to 
the more interesting problem raised by the second : 
that which is concerned with the emotional didtqudicy 
of the ends prescribed by Naturalistic Ethics. And 
in order to consider this to the best advantage I 
will assume that we are dealing with an ethical sys- 
tem which puts these ends at their highest ; which 
charges them, as it were, to the full with all that, 
on the naturalistic theory, they are capable of con- 
taining. Taking, then, as my text no narrow or 
egoistic scheme, I will suppose that in the per- 
fection and felicity of the sentient creation we may 
find the all-inclusive object prescribed by morality 
for human endeavour. Does this, then, or does it 
not, supply us with all that is needed to satisfy our 
ethical imagination ? Does it, or does it not, pro- 



NATURALISM AND ETHICS 29 

vide US with an ideal end, not merely big enough 
to exhaust our energies, but great enough to satisfy 
our aspirations ? 

At first sight the question may seem absurd. 
The object is admittedly worthy ; it is admittedly 
beyond our reach. The unwearied efforts of count- 
less generations, the slow accumulation of inherited 
experience, may, to those who find themselves able 
to read optimism into evolution, promise some faint 
approximation to the millennium at some far distant 
epoch. How, then, can we, w^hose own contribution 
to the great result must be at the best insignificant, 
at the worst nothing or worse than nothing, presume 
to think that the prescribed object is less than 
adequate to our highest emotional requirements? 
The reason is plain: our ideals are framed, not 
according to the measure of our performances, but 
according to the measure of our thoughts ; and our 
thoughts about the world in which we live tend, 
under the influence of increasing knowledge, con- 
stantly to dwarf our estimate of the importance of 
man, if man be indeed, as Naturalism would have us 
believe, no more than a phenomenon among phenom- 
ena, a natural object among other natural objects. 

For what is man looked at from this point of 
view ? Time was when his tribe and its fortunes 
were enough to exhaust the energies and to bound 
the imagination of the primitive sage.^ The gods' 

^ The line of thought here is identical with that which I pursued 
in an already published essay on the Religion of Humanity, I 



30 NATURALISM AND ETHICS 

peculiar care, the central object of an attendant uni- 
verse, that for which the sun shone and the dew 
fell, to which the stars in their courses ministered, it 
drew its origin in the past from divine ancestors, 
and might by divine favour be destined to an indef- 
inite existence of success and triumph in the future. 
These ideas represent no early or rudimentary 
stage in the human thought, yet have we left them 
far behind. The family, the tribe, the nation, are 
no longer enough to absorb our interests. Man — 
past, present, and future — lays claim to our devo- 
tion. What, then, can we say of him ? Man, so far 
as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no 
longer the final cause of the universe, the Heaven- 
descended heir of all the ages. His very existence 
is an accident, his story a brief and transitory 
episode in the life of one of the meanest of the 
planets. Of the combination of causes which first 
converted a dead organic compound into the living 
progenitors of humanity, science, indeed, as yet 
knows nothing. It is enough that from such begin- 
nings famine, disease, and mutual slaughter, fit nurses 
of the future lords of creation, have gradually 
evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience 
enough to feel that it is vile, and intelligence 
enough to know that it is insignificant. We survey 
the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, 
of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid ac- 

have not hesitated to borrow the phraseology of that essay wherever 
it seemed convenient. 



NATURALISM AND ETHICS 31 

quiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the 
future, and learn that after a period, long compared 
with the individual life, but short indeed compared 
with the divisions of time open to our investigation, 
the energies of our system will decay, the glory of 
the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and 
inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for 
a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down 
into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The 
uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner 
has for a brief space broken the contented silence of 
the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself 
no longer. ' Imperishable monuments ' and ' immortal 
deeds,' death itself, and love stronger than death, 
will be as though they had never been. Nor will 
anything that is be better or be worse for all that the 
labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have 
striven through countless generations to effect. 

It is no reply to say that the substance of the 
Moral Law need suffer no change through any 
modification of our views of man's place in the 
universe. This may be true, but it is irrelevant. 
We desire, and desire most passionately when we 
are most ourselves, to give our service to that which 
is Universal, and to that which is Abiding. Of what 
moment is it, then (from this point of view), to be 
assured of the fixity of the moral law when it and 
the sentient world, where alone it has any signifi- 
cance, are alike destined to vanish utterly away 
within periods trifling beside those with which the 



32 NATURALISM AND ETHICS 

geologist and the astronomer lightly deal in the 
course of their habitual speculations ? No doubt to 
us ordinary men in our ordinary moments considera- 
tions like these may seem far off and of little mean- 
ing. In the hurry and bustle of every-day life death 
itself — the death of the individual — seems shadowy 

' and unreal ; how much more shadowy, how much 
less real, that remoter but not less certain death 
which must some day overtake the race ! Yet, after 
all, it is in moments of reflection that the worth of 
creeds may best be tested ; it is through moments of 
reflection that they come into living and effectual 
contact with our active life. It cannot, therefore, be 
a matter to us of small moment that, as we learn to 
survey the material world with a wider vision, as we 
more clearly measure the true proportions which 
man and his performances bear to the ordered Whole, 
our practical ideal gets relatively dwarfed and 
beggared, till we may well feel inclined to ask 
whether so transitory and so unimportant an acci- 
dent in the general scheme of things as the fortunes 
of the human race can any longer satisfy aspirations 
and emotions nourished upon beliefs in the Ever- 

* lasting and the Divine. 



CHAPTER II 

NATURALISM AND .ESTHETIC 



In the last chapter I considered the effects which 
Naturalism must tend to produce upon the senti- 
ments associated with Morality. I now proceed to 
consider the same question in connection with the 
sentiments known as aesthetic ; and as I assumed that 
the former class were, like other evolutionary utilities, 
in the main produced by the normal operation of 
selection, so I now assume that the latter, being (at 
least in any developed stage) quite useless for the 
preservation of the individual or species, must be re- 
garded, upon the naturalistic hypothesis, as mere by- 
products of the great machinery by which organic 
life is varied and sustained. It will not, I hope, be 
supposed that I propose to offer this distinction as a 
material contribution towards the definition either 
of ethic or of aesthetic sentiments. This is a ques- 
tion in which I am in no way interested ; and I am 
quite prepared to admit that some emotions which 
in ordinary language would be described as ' moral,* 
are useless enough to be included in the class of 
natural accidents ; and also that this class may, 

3 



34 NATURALISM AND ^ESTHETIC 

indeed does, include many emotions which no one 
following common usage would characterise as 
aesthetic. The fact remains, however, that the 
capacity for every form of feeling must in the main 
either be, or not be, the direct result of selection 
and elimination ; and whereas in the first section of 
the last chapter I considered the former class, taking 
moral emotion as their type, so now I propose to 
offer some observations on the second class, taking 
as their type the emotions excited by the Beautiful. 
Whatever value these Notes may have will not 
necessarily be affected by any error that I may 
have made in the apportionment between the two 
divisions, and the reader may make what redistri- 
bution he thinks fit, without thereby necessarily in- 
validating the substance of the conclusions which I 
offer for his acceptance. 

I do not, however, anticipate that there will be 
any serious objection raised from the scientific side 
to the description of developed aesthetic emotion as 
* accidental,' in the sense in which that word is 
here employed. The obstacle I have to deal with 
in conducting the argument of this chapter is of a 
different kind. My object is to indicate the conse- 
quences which flow from a purely naturalistic treat- 
ment of the theory of the Beautiful ; and I am at once 
met with the difficulty that, so far as I am aware, 
no such treatment has ever been attempted on a 
large scale, and that the fragmentary contributions 
which have been made to the subject do not meet 



NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 35 

with general acceptance on the part of scientific in- 
vestigators themselves. To say that certain capaci- 
ties for highly complex feeling are not the direct 
result of natural selection, and were not evolved to 
aid the race in the struggle for existence, may be a 
true, but is a purely negative account of the matter, 
and gives but little help in dealing with the two 
questions to which an answer is especially required : 
namely, What are the causes, historical, psychologi- 
cal, and physiological, which enable us to derive ses- 
thetic gratification from some objects, and forbid us 
to derive it from others ? and. Is there any fixed and 
permanent element in Beauty, any unchanging reali- 
ty which we perceive in or through beautiful objects, 
and to which normal sesthetic feelings correspond ? 

Now, it is clear that on the naturalistic hypothesis 
the second question cannot be properly dealt with 
till some sort of answer has been given to the first ; 
and the answers given to the first seem so unsat- 
isfactory that they can hardly be regarded as even 
provisionally adequate. 

In order to realise the difficulties and, as I think, 
the shortcomings of existing theories on the sub- 
ject, let us take the case of Music — by far the most 
convenient of the Fine Arts for our purpose, part- 
ly because, unlike Architecture, it serves no very 
obvious purpose,^ and we are thus absolved from 

* I may be permitted to ignore Mr. Spencer's suggestion that 
the function of music is to promote sympathy by improving our 
modulation in speech. 



36 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

giving any opinion on the relation between beauty 
and utility ; partly because, unlike Painting and 
Poetry, it has no external reference, and we are thus 
absolved from giving any opinion on the relation 
between beauty and truth. Of the inestimable 
blessings which these peculiarities carry with them, 
anyone may judge who has ever got bogged in the 
barren controversies concerning the Beautiful and 
the Useful, the Real and the Ideal, which fill so large 
a space in certain classes of assthetic literature. 
Great indeed will he feel the advantages to be of 
dealing with an Art whose most characteristic 
utterances have so little directly to do, either with 
utility or truth. 

What, then, is the cause of our delight in Music? 
It is sometimes hastily said to have originated in 
the ancestors of man through the action of sexual 
selection. This is of course impossible. Sexual 
selection can only work on materials already in 
existence. Like other forms of selection, it can im- 
prove, but it cannot create; and the capacity for 
enjoying music (or noise) on the part of the female, 
and the capacity for making it on the part of the 
male, must both have existed in a rudimentary state 
before matrimonial preferences can have improved 
either one gift or the other. I do not in any case 
quite understand how sexual selection is supposed 
even to improve the capacity for enjoyment. If the 
taste exist, it can no doubt develop the means re- 
quired for its gratification ; but how can it improve 



NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 37 

the taste itself? The females of certain species ot 
spiders, I believe, like to see good dancing. Sexual 
selection, therefore, no doubt may gradually improve 
the dancing of the male. The females of many 
animals are, it seems, fond of particular kinds of 
noise. Sexual selection may therefore gradually fur- 
nish the male with the apparatus by which appro- 
priate noises may be produced. In both cases, 
however, a pre-existing taste is the cause of the 
variation, not the variation of the taste ; nor, ex- 
cept in the case of the advanced arts, which do not 
flourish at a period when those who successfully 
practise them have any advantage in the matri- 
monial struggle, does taste appear to be one of the 
necessary qualifications of the successful artist. Of 
course, if violin - playing were an important aid to 
courtship, sexual selection would tend to develop 
that musical feeling and discrimination, without 
which good violin-playing is impossible. But a 
grasshopper requires no artistic sensibility before 
it can successfully rub its wing-cases together ; so 
that Nature is only concerned to provide the an- 
atomical machinery by which such rubbing may 
result in a sibilation gratifying to the existing 
aesthetic sensibilities of the female, but cannot in 
any way be concerned in developing the artistic 
side of those sensibilities themselves. 

Sexual selection, therefore, however well it may 
be fitted to give an explanation of a large number of 
animal noises and of the growth of the organs by 



38 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

which they are produced, throws but little light on 
the origin and development of musical feeling, either 
in animals or men. And the other explanations I 
have seen do not seem to me much better. Take, 
for instance, Mr. Spencer's modification of Rousseau's 
theory. According to Mr. Spencer, strong emotions 
are naturally accompanied by muscular exertion, and, 
among other muscular exertions, by contractions 
and extensions of ' the muscles of the chest, abdomen, 
and vocal cords.' The resultant noises recall by 
association the emotions which gave them birth, and 
from this primordial coincidence sprang, as we are 
asked to believe, first cadenced speech, and then 
music. Now I do not desire to quarrel with the 
* primordial coincidence.' My point is, that even if 
it ever took place, it affords no explanation of any 
modern feeling for music. Grant that a particular 
emotion produced a ' contraction of the abdomen,' 
that the ' contraction of the abdomen ' produced a 
sound or series of sounds, and that, through this 
association with the originating emotion, the sound 
ultimately came to have independent aesthetic value, 
how are we advanced towards any explanation of 
the fact that quite different sound-effects now please 
us, and that the nearer we get to the original noises, 
the more hideous they appear? How does the * pri- 
mordial coincidence ' account for our ancestors lik^ 
ing the tom-tom ? And how does the fact that our 
ancestors liked the tom-tom account for our liking 
the Ninth Symphony ? 



NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 39 

The truth is that Mr. Spencer's theory, like all 
others which endeavour to trace back the pleasure- 
giving qualities of art to some simple and original 
association, slurs over the real difficulties of the 
problem. If it is the primitive association which 
produces the pleasure-giving quality, the further this 
is left behind by the developing art, the less pleasure 
should be produced. Of course, if the art is con- 
tinually fed from other associations and different 
experiences, if fresh emotional elements are con- 
stantly added to it capable of being worn and 
weathered into the fitting soil for an aesthetic har- 
vest, in that case, no doubt, we may suppose that 
with each new development its pleasure - giving 
qualities may be enriched and multiplied. But then, 
it is to these new elements and to these new experi- 
ences, not to the * primordial coincidence,' that we 
should mainly look for the causal explanation of 
our aesthetic feeling. In the case of music, where 
are these new elements and experiences to be 
found ? None can tell us ; few theorists even try. 
Indeed, the procedure of those who account for 
music by searching for the primitive association 
which first in the history of man or of his ancestors 
conferred aesthetic value upon noise, is as if one 
should explain the Amazon in its flood by point- 
ing to the rivulet in the far Andes which, as the 
tributary most distant from its mouth, has the honour 
of being called its source. This may be allowed to 
stand as a geographical description, but it is very 



40 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

inadequate as a physical explanation. Dry up the 
rivulet, and the huge river would still flow on, 
without abatement or diminution. Only its titular 
origin has been touched ; and if we would know the 
Amazon in its beginnings, and trace back the history 
of the vast result through all the complex ramifica- 
tions of its contributory causes, each great confluent 
must be explored, each of the countless streams 
enumerated whose gathered waters sweep into the 
sea four thousand miles across the plain. 

The imperfection of this mode of procedure will 
become clear if we compare it with that adopted 
by the same school of theorists when they endeavour 
to explain the beauty of landscape. I do not mean 
to express any assent to their account of the causes 
of our feelings for scenery ; on the contrary, these 
accounts seem to me untenable. But though unten- 
able, they are not on the face of them inadequate. 
Natural objects — the sky and hills, woods and waters 
— are spread out before us as they were spread out 
before our remotest ancestors, and there is no ob- 
vious absurdity (if the hereditary transmission of 
acquired qualities be granted) in conceiving them, 
through the secular experience of mankind, to be- 
come charged with associations which reappear for 
us in the vague and massive form of aesthetic pleas- 
ure. But according to all association theories of 
music, that which is charged with the raw material of 
aesthetic pleasure is not the music we wish to have 
explained, but some primeval howl, or at best the 



NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 4I 

unmusical variations of ordinary speech, and no 
solution whatever is offered of the paradox that the 
sounds which give musical delight have no associa- 
tions, and that the sounds which have associations 
give no musical delight. 

It is, perhaps, partly in consequence of these or 
analogous difficulties, but mainly in consequence of 
his views on heredity, which preclude him from 
accepting any theory which involves the transmis- 
sion of acquired qualities, that Weismann gives an 
account of the musical sense which is practically 
equivalent to the denial that any explanation of the 
pleasure we derive from music is possible at all. 
For him, the faculties which enable us to appreciate 
and enjoy music were evolved for entirely differ- 
ent purposes, and it is a mere accident that, when 
they come into relation with certain combinations 
of sound, we obtain through their means sesthetic 
gratification. Mankind, no doubt, are continually 
inventing new musical devices, as they are con- 
tinually inventing new dishes. But as the second 
process implies an advance in the art of cookery, 
but no transmitted modification in the human pal- 
ate, so the former implies musical progress, but no 
change in the innate capacities of successive genera- 
tions of listeners.^ 

^ I have made no allusion to Helmholtz's classic investigations, 
for these deal chiefly with the physical character of the sounds, or 
combinations of sound, which give us pleasure, but do not pretend 
fully to answer the question why they give pleasure. 



42 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 



II 



This is, perhaps, a sufficiently striking example of 
the unsatisfactory condition of scientific sesthetics, 
and may serve to show how difficult it is to find in 
the opinions of different authorities a common body 
of doctrine on which to rest the argument of this 
chapter. I should imagine, however, both from 
the speculations to which I have just briefly ad- 
verted, and from any others with which I am ac- 
quainted, that no person who is at all in sympathy 
with the naturalistic view of things would maintain 
that there anywhere exists an intrinsic and essential 
quality of beauty, independent of the feelings and 
the taste of the observer. The very nature, indeed, 
of the senses principally engaged indicates that on 
the naturalistic hypothesis they cannot, in most cases, 
refer to any external and permanent object of beauty. 
For Naturalism (as commonly held) is deeply com- 
mitted to the distinction between the primary and 
the secondary qualities of matter ; the former (exten- 
sion, solidity, and so forth) being supposed to exist as 
they are perceived, while the latter (such as sound and 
colour) are due to the action of the primary qualities 
upon the sentient organism, and apart from the sen- 
tient organism have no independent being. Every 
scene in Nature, therefore, and every work of art, 
whose beauty consists either directly or indirectly, 
either presentatively or representatively, in colour or 



NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 43 

in sound, has, and can have, no more permanent exist- 
ence than is possessed by that relation between the 
senses and our material environment which gave 
them birth, and in the absence of Avhich they perish. 
If we could perceive the succession of events which 
constitute a sunset exactly as they occur, as they 
are (physically, not metaphysically speaking) in 
themselves^ they would, so far as we can guess, have 
no aesthetic merit, or even meaning. If we could 
perform the same operation on a symphony, it 
would end in a like result. The first would be no 
more than a special agitation of the ether ; the 
second would be no more than a special agitation 
of the air. However much they might excite the 
curiosity of the physicist or the mathematician, for 
the artist they could no longer possess either inter- 
est or significance. 

It might, however, be said that the Beautiful, 
although it cannot be called permanent as compared 
with the general framework of the external world, 
is, nevertheless, sufficiently permanent for all human 
purposes, inasmuch as it depends upon fixed rela- 
tions between our senses and their material sur- 
roundings. Without at present stopping to dispute 
this, let us consider whether we have any right to 
suppose that even this degree of ' objectivity ' can 
be claimed for the quality of beauty. In order to 
settle the question we can, on the naturalistic 
hypothesis, appeal, it would seem, to only one 
authority, namely, the experience of mankind, 



44 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

Does this, then, provide us with any evidence that 
beauty is more than the name for a miscellaneous 
flux of endlessly varying causes, possessing no 
property in common, except that at some place, at 
some time, and in some person, they have shown 
themselves able to evoke the kind of feeling 
which we choose to describe as aesthetic ? 

Put thus there seems room for but one answer. 
The variations of opinion on the subject of beauty 
are notorious. Discordant pronouncements are 
made by different races, different ages, different 
individuals, the same individual at different times. 
Nor does it seem possible to devise any scheme by 
which an authoritative verdict can be extracted from 
this chaos of contradiction. An appeal, indeed, is 
sometimes made from the opinion of the vulgar to 
the decision of persons of ' trained sensibility ' ; and 
there is no doubt that, as a matter of fact, through 
the action of those who profess to belong to this 
class, an orthodox tradition has grown up which 
may seem at first sight almost to provide some faint 
approximation to the 'objective' standard of Avhich 
we are in search. Yet it will be evident on con- 
sideration that it is not simply on their ' trained 
sensibility ' that experts rely in forming their 
opinion. The ordinary critical estimate of a work 
of art is the result of a highly complicated set of 
antecedents, and by no means consists in a simple 
and naked valuation of the ' sesthetic thrill ' which 
the aforesaid work produces in the critic, now and 



NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 45 

here. If it were so, clearly it could not be of any 
importance to the art critic when and by whom any 
particular work of art was produced. Problems of 
age and questions of authorship would be left en- 
tirely to the historian, and the student of the beau- 
tiful would, as such, ask himself no question but 
this: How and why are my aesthetic sensibilities 
affected by this statue, poem, picture, as it is in 
itself? or (to put the same thing in a form less open 
to metaphysical disputation), What would my feelings 
towards it be if I were totally ignorant of its date, 
its author, and the circumstances of its production ? 
As we all know, these collateral considerations 
are never in practice ignored by the critic. He is 
preoccupied, and rightly preoccupied, by a multi- 
tude of questions beyond the mere valuation of the 
outstanding amount of aesthetic enjoyment which, 
in the year 1892, any artistic or literary work, taken 
sinipliciter, is, as a matter of fact, capable of produc- 
ing. He is much concerned with its technical pecul- 
iarities. He is anxious to do justice to its author, 
to assign him his true rank among the productive 
geniuses of his age and country, to make due allow- 
ance for his ' environment,' for the traditions in 
which he was nurtured, for the causes which make 
his creative genius embody itself in one form rather 
than in another. Never for one instant does the 
critic forget, or allow his reader to forget, that the 
real magnitude of the foreshortened object under 
observation must be estimated by the rules of his- 



46 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

torical perspective. Never does he omit, in dealing 
with the artistic legacies of bygone times, to take 
account of any long - accepted opinion which may 
exist concerning them. He endeavours to make 
himself the exponent of the ' correct view.' His 
judgment is, consciously or unconsciously, but not, 
I think, wrongly, a sort of compromise between that 
which he would form if he drew solely from his 
own inner experience, and that which has been 
formed for him by the accumulated wisdom of his 
predecessors on the bench. He expounds case- 
made law. He is partly the creature and partly the 
creator of a critical tradition ; and we can easily 
conjecture how devious his course would be, were 
his orbit not largely controlled by the attraction of 
received views, if we watch the disastrous fate 
which so often overtakes him when he pronounces 
judgment on new works, or on works of which 
there is no estimate embodied in any literary creed 
which he thinks it necessary to respect. Voltaire's 
opinion of Shakespeare does not make one think 
less of Voltaire, but it throws an interesting light 
on the genesis of average critical decisions and the 
normal growth of taste. 

From these considerations, which might easily 
be supplemented, it seems plain that the opinions of 
critical experts represent, not an objective standard, 
if such a thing there be, but an historical compro- 
mise. The agreement among them, so far as such a 
thing is to be found, is not due solely to the fact 



NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 47 

that with their own eyes they all see the same 
things, and therefore say the same things ; it is not 
wholly the result of a common experience : it arises 
in no small measure from their sympathetic endeav- 
ours to see as others have seen, to feel as others 
have felt, to judge as others have judged. This 
may be, and I suppose is, the fairest way of compar- 
ing the merits of deceased artists. But, at the same 
time, it makes it impossible for us to attach much 
weight to the assumed consensus of the ages, or to 
suppose that this, so far as it exists, implies the 
reality of a standard independent of the varying 
whims and fancies of individual critics. In truth, 
however, the consensus of the ages, even about the 
greatest works of creative genius, is not only in part 
due to the process of critical manufacture indicated 
above, but its whole scope and magnitude are ab- 
surdly exaggerated in the phrases which pass cur- 
rent on the subject. This is not a question, be it 
observed, of aesthetic right and wrong, of good taste 
or bad taste ; it is a question of statistics. We are 
not here concerned with what the mass of mankind, 
even of educated mankind, ought to feel, but with 
what as a matter of fact they do feel, about the 
works of literature and art which they have inher- 
ited from the past. And I believe that every im- 
partial observer will admit that, of the aesthetic 
emotion actually experienced by any generation, the 
merest fraction is due to the 'immortal ' productions 
of the generations which have long preceded it. 



48 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

Their immortality is largely an immortality of 
libraries and museums ; they supply material to 
critics and historians, rather than enjoyment to 
mankind ; and if it were to be maintained that one 
music-hall song gives more aesthetic pleasure in a 
night than the most exquisite compositions of Pales- 
trina in a decade, I know not how the proposition 
could be refuted. 

The ancient Norsemen supposed that besides the 
soul of the dead, which went to the region of de- 
parted spirits, there survived a ghost, haunting, 
though not for ever, the scenes of his earthly la- 
bours. At first vivid and almost lifelike, it slowly 
waned and faded, until at length it vanished, leav- 
ing behind it no trace or memory of its spectral 
presence amidst the throng of living men. So, it 
seems to me, is the immortality we glibly predicate 
of departed artists. If they survive at all, it is but 
a shadowy life they live, moving on through the 
gradations of slow decay to distant but inevitable 
death. They can no longer, as heretofore, speak 
directly to the hearts of their fellow-men, evoking 
their tears or laughter, and all the pleasures, be 
they sad or merry, of which imagination holds the 
secret. Driven from the market-place, they become 
first the companions of the student, then the victims 
of the specialist. He who would still hold familiar 
intercourse with them must train himself to pene- 
trate the veil which, in ever-thickening folds, con- 
ceals them from the ordinary gaze ; he must catch 



NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 49 

the tone of a vanished society, he must move in a 
circle of alien associations, he must think in a lan- 
guage not his own. Need we, then, wonder that 
under such conditions the outfit of a critic is as 
much intellectual as emotional, or that if from off 
the complex sentiments with which they regard the 
' immortal legacies of the past ' we strip all that is 
due to interests connected with history, with biog- 
raphy, with critical analyses, with scholarship, and 
with technique, but a small modicum will, as a rule, 
remain which can with justice be attributed to pure 
aesthetic sensibility. 

Ill 

I have, however, no intention of implying by the 
preceding observations that the aesthetic feelings 
of * the vulgar ' are less sophisticated than those of 
the learned. A very cursory examination of ' public 
taste ' and its revolutions may suffice to convince 
anyone of the contrary. And, in the first place, let 
us ask why every ' public ' has a taste ? And why, 
at least in Western communities, that taste is so apt 
to alter ? Why, in other words, do communities or 
sections of communities so often feel the same thing 
at the same time, and so often feel different things at 
different times? Why is there so much uniformity, 
and why is there so much change ? 

These questions are of great interest, although 
they have not, perhaps, met with all the attention 
4 



50 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

they deserve. In these Notes it would not be fitting 
to attempt to deal with them at length, and I shall 
only offer observations on two points which seem 
relevant to the design of the present chapter. 

The question of Uniformity is best approached 
at the humbler end of the aesthetic scale, in connec- 
tion, not with art in its narrower and loftier sense, 
but with dress. Everybody is acquainted, either 
by observation or by personal experience, with the 
coercive force of fashion ; but not everybody is 
aware what an instructive and interesting phenom- 
enon it presents. Consider the case of bonnets. 
During the same season all persons belonging, or 
aspiring to belong, to the same * public,' if they wear 
bonnets at all, wear bonnets modelled on the same 
type. Why do they do this ? If we were asking a 
similar question, not about bonnets, but about steam- 
engines, the answer would be plain. People tend 
at the same date to use the same kind of engine for 
the same kind of purpose because it is the best avail- 
able. They change their practice when a better one 
is invented. But as so used the words ' better' and 
* best ' have no application to modern dress. Neither 
efficiency nor economy, it will at once be admitted, 
supplies the grounds of choice or the motives for 
variation. 

If, again, we were asking the question about some 
great phase of art, we should probably be told that 
the general acceptance of it by a whole generation 
was due to some important combination of historic 



NATURALISM AND iESTHETIC 5 1 

causes, acting alike on artist and on public. Such 
causes no doubt exist and have existed ; but the case 
of fashion proves that uniformity is not produced by 
them alone, since it will hardly be pretended that 
there is any widely diffused cause in the social 
environment, except the coercive operation of fash- 
ion itself, which should make the bonnets which 
were thought becoming in 1881 unbecoming in the 
year 1892. 

Again, we might be told that art contains essen- 
tial principles of self-development, which require one 
productive phase to succeed another by a kind of 
inner necessity, and determine not merely that there 
shall be variation, but what that variation shall be. 
This also may be, and is, in a certain sense, true. 
But it can hardly be supposed that we can explain 
the fashions which prevail in any year by assuming, 
not merely that the fashions of the previous years 
were foredoomed to change, but also that, in the na- 
ture of the case, only one change was possible, that, 
namely, which actually took place. Such a doctrine 
would be equivalent to saying that if all the bonnet- 
wearers were for a space deprived of any knowledge 
of each other's proceedings (all other things remain- 
ing the same), they would, on the resumption of their 
ordinary intercourse, find that they had all inclined 
towards much the same modification of the type of 
bonnet prevalent before their separation — a con- 
clusion which seems to me, I confess, to be some- 
what improbable. 



52 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

It may perhaps be hazarded, as a further expla- 
nation, that this uniformity of practice is indeed a fact, 
and is really produced by a complex group of causes 
which we denominate ' fashion,' but that it is a 
uniformity of practice alone, not of taste or feeling, 
and has no real relation to any aesthetic problem 
whatever. This is a question the answer to which 
can be supplied, I apprehend, by observation alone ; 
and the answer which observation enables us to give 
seems to me quite unambiguous. If, as is possi- 
ble, my readers have but small experience in such 
matters themselves, let them examine the experi- 
ences of their acquaintance. They will find, if I 
mistake not, that by whatever means conformity to 
a particular pattern may have been brought about, 
those who conform are not, as a rule, conscious of 
coercion by an external and arbitrary authority. 
They do not act under penalty ; they yield no un- 
willing obedience. On the contrary, their admira- 
tion for a * well-dressed person,' qua well-dressed, is 
at least as genuine an aesthetic approval as any they 
are in the habit of expressing for other forms of 
beauty ; just as their objection to an outworn fash- 
ion is based on a perfectly genuine sesthetic dislike. 
They are repelled by the unaccustomed sight, as a 
reader of discrimination is repelled by turgidity or 
false pathos. It appears to them ugly, even gro- 
tesque, and they turn from it with an aversion as 
disinterested, as unperturbed by personal or ' so- 
ciety ' considerations, as if they were critics contem- 



NATURALISM AND .ESTHETIC 53 

plating the production of some pretender in the 
region of Great Art. 

In truth this tendency in matters sesthetic is only 
a particular case of a general tendency to agreement 
which plays an even more important part in other 
departments of human activity. Its operation, benefi- 
cent doubtless on the whole, may be traced through 
all social and political life. We owe to it in part 
that deep-lying likeness in tastes, in opinions, and in 
habits, without which cohesion among the individ- 
ual units of a community would be impossible, and 
which constitutes the unmoved platform on which 
we fight out our political battles. It is no contemp- 
tible factor among the forces by which nations are 
created and religions disseminated and maintained. 
It is the very breath of life to sects and coteries. 
Sometimes, no doubt, its results are ludicrous. 
Sometimes they are unfortunate. Sometimes merely 
insignificant. Under which of these heads we should 
class our ever-changing uniformity in dress I will 
not take upon me to determine. It is sufficient for 
my present purpose to point out that the aesthetic 
likings which fashion originates, however trivial, are 
perfectly genuine ; and that to an origin similar in 
kind, however different in dignity and permanence, 
should be traced much of the characteristic quality 
which gives its special flavour to the higher artistic 
sentiments of each successive generation. 



54 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 



IV 

It is, of course, true that this ' tendency to agree- 
ment,'^ this principle of drill, cannot itself determine 
the objects in respect of which the agreement is to 
take place. It can do much to make every member 
of a particular ' public ' like the same bonnet, or the 
same epic, at the same time ; but it cannot deter- 
mine what that bonnet or that epic is to be. A 
fashion, as the phrase goes, has to be ' set,' and the 
persons who set it manifestly do not follow it. What, 
then, do they follow ? We note the influences that 
move the flock. What moves the bell-wether? 

Here again much might conveniently be learnt 
from an examination of fashion and its changes, for 
these provide us with a field of research where we 
are disturbed by no preconceived theories or incon- 
venient admirations, and where we may dissect our 
subject with the cold impartiality which befits 
scientific investigation. The reader, however, may 
think that enough has been done already by this 
method ; and I shall accordingly pursue a more 
general treatment of the subject, premising that in 
the brief observations which follow no complete 

^ Of course the ' tendency to agreement ' is not presented to the 
reader as a simple, undecomposable social force. It is, doubtless, 
highly complex, one of its most important elements being, I sup-^ 
pose, the instinct of uncritical imitation, which is the very basis of all 
effective education. The line of thought hinted at in this paragraph 
is pursued much further in the Third Part of this Essay. 



NATURALISM AND .ESTHETIC 55 

analysis of the complexity of concrete Nature is 
attempted, or is, indeed, necessary for my purpose. 

It will be convenient, in the first place, to dis- 
tinguish between the mode in which the public who 
enjoy, and the artists who produce, respectively 
promote aesthetic change. That the public are often 
weary and expectant — weary of what is provided for 
them, and expectant of some good thing to come — 
will hardly be denied. Yet I do not think they can 
be usually credited with the conscious demand for a 
fresh artistic development. For though they often 
want some new thing, they do not often want a new 
kind of thing ; and accordingly it commonly, though 
not invariably, happens that, when the new thing 
appears, it is welcomed at first by the few, and only 
gradually — by the force of fashion and otherwise 
— conquers the genuine admiration of the many. 

The artist, on the other hand, is moved in no 
small measure by a desire that his work should be 
his own, no pale reflection of another's methods, 
but an expression of himself in his own language. 
He will vary for the better if he can, yet, rather than 
be conscious of repetition, he will vary for the worse ; 
for vary he must, either in substance or in form, 
unless he is to be in his own eyes, not a creator, but 
an imitator ; not an artist, but a copyist.^ 

It will be observed that I am not obliged to 

* No doubt it is an echo of this feeling that makes purchasers 
commonly prefer a bad original to the best copy of the best original — 
a preference which in argument it would be exceedingly difficult to 
justify. 



56 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

draw the dividing-line between originality and pla- 
giarism ; to distinguish between the man who is one 
of a school, and the man who has done no more 
than merely catch the trick of a master. It is 
enough that the artist himself draws the distinction, 
and will never consciously allow himself to sink from 
the first category into the second. 

We have here, then, a general cause of change, 
but not a cause of change in any particular direction, 
or of any particular amount.. These I believe to be 
determined in part by the relation between the 
artists and the public for whom they produce, and in 
part by the condition of the art itself at the time the 
change occurs. As regards the first, it is commonly 
said that the artist is the creation of his age, and the 
discovery of this fact is sometimes thought to be a 
momentous contribution made by science to the 
theory of aesthetic evolution. The statement, how- 
ever, is unfortunately worded. The action of the 
age is, no doubt, important, but it would be more 
accurate, I imagine, to describe it as destructive 
than as creative ; it does not so much produce as 
select. It is true, of course, that the influence of 
* the environment ' in moulding, developing, and 
stimulating genius within the limits of its original 
capacity is very great, and may seem, especially in 
the humbler walks of artistic production, to be all- 
powerful. But innate and original genius is not the 
creation of any age. It is a biological accident, the 
incalculable product of two sets of ancestral ten- 



NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 57 

dencies ; and what the age does to these biological 
accidents is not to create them, but to choose from 
them, to encourage those which are in harmony with 
its spirit, to crush out and to sterilise the rest. Its 
action is analogous to that which a plot of ground 
exercises on the seeds which fall upon it. Some 
thrive, some languish, some die ; and the resulting 
vegetation is sharply characterised, not because few 
kinds of seed have there sown themselves, but 
because few kinds have been allowed to grow up. 
Without pushing the parallel too far, it may yet 
serve to illustrate the truth that, as a stained win- 
dow derives its character and significance from the 
absorption of a large portion of the rays which 
endeavour to pass through it, so an age is what it is, 
not only by reason of what it fosters, but as much, 
perhaps, by reason of what it destroys. We may con- 
ceive, then, that from the total but wholly unknown 
number of men of productive capacity born in any 
generation, those whose gifts are in harmony with 
the tastes of their contemporaries will produce their 
best ; those whose gifts are wholly out of harmony 
will be extinguished, or, which is very nearly the 
same thing, will produce only for the benefit of the 
critics in succeeding generations ; while those who 
occupy an intermediate position will, indeed, produce, 
but their powers will, consciously or unconsciously, 
be warped and thwarted, and their creations fall short 
of what, under happier circumstances, they might 
have been able to achieve. 



58 NATURALISM AND .ESTHETIC 

Here, then, we have a tendency to change aris- 
ing out of the artist's insistence on originality, and 
a limitation on change imposed by the character 
of the age in which he lives. The kind of change 
will be largely determined by the condition of 
the art which he is practising. If it be in an 
early phase, full as yet of undeveloped possibili- 
ties, then in all probability he will content him- 
self with improving on his predecessors, without 
widely deviating from the lines they have laid 
down. For this is the direction of least resistance : 
here is no public taste to be formed, here are no 
great experiments to be tried, here the pioneer's 
rough work of discovery has already been accom- 
plished. But if this particular fashion of art has 
culminated, and be in its decline ; if, that is to say, 
the artist feels more and more difficulty in express- 
ing himself through it, without saying worse what 
his predecessors have said already, then one of 
three things happens — either originality is perforce 
sought for in exaggeration; or a new style is 
invented ; or artistic creation is abandoned and the 
field is given up to mere copyists. Which of these 
events shall happen depends, no doubt, partly on 
the accident of genius, but it depends, I think, still 
more on the prevailing taste. If, as has frequently 
happened, that taste be dominated by the memory 
of past ideals ; if the little public whom the big 
public follow are content with nothing that does 
not conform to certain ancient models, a period of 



NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 59 

artistic sterility is inevitable. But if circumstances 
be more propitious, then art continues to move ; 
the direction and character of its movement being 
due partly to the special turn of genius possessed 
by the artist who succeeds in producing a public 
taste in harmony with his powers, and partly to the 
reaction of the taste thus created, or in process of 
creation, upon the general artistic talent of the 
community. 

Even, however, in those periods when the 
movement of art is most striking, it is dangerous 
to assume that movement implies progress, if by 
progress be meant increase in the power to excite 
cBsthetic emotion. It would be rash to assume this 
even as regards Music, where the movement has 
been more remarkable, more continuous, and more 
apparently progressive over a long period of time 
than in any other art whatever. In music, the 
artist's desire for originality of expression has been 
aided generation after generation by the discovery 
of new methods, new forms, new instruments. From 
the bare simplicity of the ecclesiastical chant or the 
village dance to the ordered complexity of the modern 
score, the art has passed through successive stages 
of development, in each of which genius has dis- 
covered devices of harmony, devices of instrumenta- 
tion, and devices of rhythm which would have been 
musical paradoxes to preceding generations, and 
became musical commonplaces to the generations 
that followed after. Yet, what has been the net 



60 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

gain? Read through the long catena of critical 
judgments, from Wagner back (if you please) to 
Plato, which every age has passed on its own per- 
formances, and you will find that to each of them 
its music has been as adequate as ours is to us. It 
moved them not less deeply, nor did it move them 
differently ; and compositions which for us have 
lost their magic, and which we regard as at best 
but agreeable curiosities, contained for them the 
secret of all the unpictured beauties which music 
shows to her worshippers. 

Surely there is here a great paradox. The 
history of Literature and Art is tolerably well known 
to us for many hundreds of years. During that 
period Poetry and Sculpture and Painting have 
been subject to the usual mutations of fashion ; there 
have been seasons of sterility and seasons of plenty ; 
schools have arisen and decayed ; new nations and 
languages have been pressed into the service of Art ; 
old nations have fallen out of line. But it is not 
commonly supposed that at the end of it all we 
are much better off than the Greeks of the age of 
Pericles in respect of the technical dexterity of the 
artist, or of the resources which he has at his com- 
mand. During the same period, and measured by the 
same external standard, the development of Music 
has been so great that it is not, I think, easy to exag- 
gerate it. Yet, through all this vast revolution, the 
position and importance of the art as compared with 
other arts seem, so far as I can discover, to have 



NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 6 1 

suffered no sensible change. It was as great four 
hundred years before Christ as it is at the present 
moment. It was as great in the sixteenth, seven- 
teenth, and eighteenth centuries as it is in the nine- 
teenth. How, then, can we resist the conclusion 
that this amazing musical development, produced 
by the expenditure of so much genius, has added 
little to the felicity of mankind; unless, indeed, it 
so happens that in his particular art a steady level 
of aesthetic sensation can only be maintained by 
increasing doses of aesthetic stimulant. 



These somewhat desultory observations do not, 
it must be acknowledged, carry us very far towards 
that of which we are in search, namely, a theory 
of aesthetics in harmony with naturalism. Yet, on 
recapitulation, negative conclusions of some impor- 
tance will, I think, be seen to follow from them. It 
is clear, for instance, that those who, like Goethe, 
long to dwell among ^ permanent relations,' wherever 
else they may find them, will at least not find them in 
or behind the feeling of beauty. Such permanent 
relations do, indeed, exist, binding in their unchang- 
ing framework the various forms of energy and 
matter which make up the physical universe ; but 
it is not the perception of these which, either in 
Nature or in art, stirs within us aesthetic emotion — 
else should we find our surest guides to beauty in 



62 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

an astronomical chart or a table of chemical equiva- 
lents, and nothing would seem to us of less aes- 
thetic significance than a symphony or a love-song. 
That which is beautiful is not the object as we 
know it to be — the vibrating molecule and the un- 
dulating ether — but the object as we know it not 
to be — glorious with qualities of colour or of sound. 
Nor can its beauty be supposed to last any longer 
than the transient reaction between it and our spe- 
cial senses, which are assuredly not permanent or 
important elements in the constitution of the world 
in which we live. 

But even within these narrow limits — narrow, I 
mean, compared with the wide sweep of our scientific 
vision — there seemed to be no ground for supposing 
that there is in Nature any standard of beauty to 
which all human tastes tend to conform, any beauti- 
ful objects which all normally constituted individuals 
are moved to admire, any aesthetic judgments which 
can claim to be universal. The divergence between 
different tastes is, indeed, not only notorious, but is 
what we should have expected. As our aesthetic 
feelings are not due to natural selection, natural se- 
lection will have no tendency to keep them uni- 
form and stable. In this respect they differ, as I 
have said, from ethical sentiments and beliefs. De^ 
viations from sound morality are injurious either 
to the individual or to the community — those who 
indulge in them are at a disadvantage in the struggle 
for existence ; hence, on the naturalistic hypothesis, 



NATURALISM AND ^ESTHETIC 63 

the approximation to identity in the accepted codes 
of different nations. But there is, fortunately, no 
natural punishment annexed to bad taste ; and ac- 
cordingly the variation between tastes has passed 
into a proverb. 

Even in those cases where some slender thread 
of similarity seemed to bind together the tastes of 
different times or different persons, further con- 
sideration showed that this was largely due to 
causes which can by no possibility be connected 
with any supposed permanent element in beauty. 
The agreement, for example, between critics, in so 
far as it exists, is to no small extent an agreement 
in statement and in analysis, rather than an agree- 
ment in feeling ; they have the same opinion as to 
the cooking of the dinner, but they by no means all 
eat it with the same relish. In few cases, indeed, 
do their estimates of excellence correspond with the 
living facts of aesthetic emotion as shown either in 
themselves or in anybody else. Their whole pro- 
cedure, necessary though it may be for the compara- 
tive estimate of the worth of individual artists, unduly 
conceals the vast and arbitrary ^ changes by which 
the taste of one generation is divided from that of 
another. And when we turn from critical tradi- 
tion to the assthetic likes and dislikes of men and 
women ; when we leave the admirations which are 
professed for the emotions which are felt, we find 

* 'Arbitrary,* i.e. not due to any causes which point to the ex- 
istence of objective beauty. 



64 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

in vast multitudes of cases that these are not 
connected with the object which happens to ex- 
cite them by any permanent aesthetic bond at all. 
Their true determining cause is to be sought in 
fashion, in that * tendency to agreement' which plays 
so large and beneficent a part in social economy. 
Nor, in considering the causes which produce the 
rise and fall of schools, and all the smaller muta- 
tions in the character of aesthetic production, did 
we perceive more room for the belief that there is 
somewhere to be found a permanent element in the 
beautiful. There is no evidence that these changes 
constitute stages in any process of gradual approxi- 
mation to an unchanging standard ; they are not 
born of any strivings after some ideal archetype ; 
they do not, like the movements of science, bring 
us ever nearer to central and immutable truth. On 
the contrary, though schools are born, mature, and 
perish, though ancient forms decay, and new ones 
are continually devised, this restless movement is, 
so far as science can pronounce, without meaning 
or purpose, the casual product of the quest after 
novelty, determined in its course by incalculable 
forces, by accidents of genius, by accidents of public 
humour, involving change but not progress, and 
predestined, perhaps, to end universally, as at many 
times and in many places it has ended already, in a 
mood of barren acquiescence in the repetition of 
ancient models, the very Nirvana of artistic imagi- 
nation, without desire and without pain. 



NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 65 

And yet the persistent and almost pathetic 
endeavours of sesthetic theory to show that the 
beautiful is a necessary and unchanging element in 
the general scheme of things, if they prove nothing 
else, may at least convince us that mankind will not 
easily reconcile themselves to the view which the 
naturalistic theory of the world would seemingly 
compel them to accept. We feel no difficulty, 
perhaps, in admitting the full consequences of that 
theory at the lower end of the aesthetic scale, in 
the region, for instance, of bonnets and wall-papers. 
We may tolerate it even when it deals with impor- 
tant elements in the highest art, such as the sense 
of technical excellence, or sympathy with the crafts- 
man's skill. But when we look back on those too 
rare moments when feelings stirred in us by some 
beautiful object not only seem wholly to absorb us, 
but to raise lis to the vision of things far above the 
ken of bodily sense or discursive reason, we cannot 
acquiesce in any attempt at explanation which con- 
fines itself to the bare enumeration of psychological 
and physiological causes and effects. We cannot 
willingly assent to a theory which makes a good 
composer only differ from a good cook in that he 
deals in more complicated relations, moves in a 
wider circle of associations, and arouses our feel- 
ings through a different sense. However little, 
therefore, we may be prepared to accept any par- 
ticular scheme of metaphysical aesthetics — and most 
of these appear to me to be very absurd — we must 
5 



66 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 

believe that somewhere and for some Being there 
shines an unchanging splendour of beauty, of which 
in Nature and in Art we see, each of us from our 
own standpoint, only passing gleams and stray reflec- 
tions, whose different aspects we cannot now co- 
ordinate, whose import we cannot fully comprehend, 
but which at least is something other than the chance 
play of subjective sensibility or the far-off echo of 
ancestral lusts. No such mystical creed can, how- 
ever, be squeezed out of observation and experi- 
ment ; Science cannot give it us ; nor can it be 
forced into any sort of consistency with the Nat- 
uralistic Theory of the Universe. 



CHAPTER III 

NATURALISM AND REASON 



Among those who accept without substantial modi- 
fication the naturalistic theory of the universe are 
some who find a compensation for the general non- 
rationality of Nature in the fact that, after all, rea- 
son, human reason, is Nature's final product. If the 
world is not made by Reason, Reason is at all 
events made by the world ; and the unthinking in- 
teraction of causes and effects has at least resulted 
in a consciousness wherein that interaction may be 
reflected and understood. This is not Teleology. 
Indeed it is a doctrine which leaves no room for any 
belief in design. But in the minds of some who 
have but imperfectly grasped their own doctrines, 
it appears capable of partially meeting the senti- 
mental needs to which teleology gives a fuller satis- 
faction, inasmuch as reason thus finds an assured 
place in the scheme c^ things, and is enabled, after 
the fashion of the Chinese, in some sort to ennoble 
its ignoble progenitors. 

This theory of the non-rational origin of reason, 
which is a necessary corollary of the naturalistic 



68 NATURALISM AND REASON 

scheme, has philosophical consequences of great in- 
terest, to some of which I have alluded elsewhere,^ 
and which must occupy our attention in a later 
chapter of these Notes. In the meanwhile, there 
are other aspects of the subject which deserve a 
moment's consideration. 

From the point of view of organic evolution 
there is no distinction, I imagine, to be drawn be- 
tween the development of reason and that of any 
other faculty, physiological or psychical, by which 
the interests of the individual or the race are pro- 
moted. From the humblest form of nervous irri- 
tability at one end of the scale, to the reasoning 
capacity of the most advanced races at the other, 
everything, without exception — sensation, instinct, 
desire, volition — has been produced, directly or in- 
directly, by natural causes acting for the most part 
on strictly utilitarian principles. Convenience, not 
knowledge, therefore, has been the main end to 
which this process has tended. ' It was not for pur- 
poses of research that our senses were evolved,' nor 
was it in order to penetrate the secrets of the uni- 
verse that we are endowed with reason. 

Under these circumstances it is not surprising 
that the faculties thus laboriously created are but 
imperfectly fitted to satisfy that speculative curios- 
ity which is one of the most curious by-products of 
the evolutionary process. The inadequacy of our 
intellect, indeed, to resolve the questions which it 

* Philosophic Doubt, Pt. iii., ch. xiii. 



NATURALISM AND REASON 69 

is capable of asking is acknowledged (at least in 
words) both by students of science and by students 
of theology. But they do not seem so much im- 
pressed with the inadequacy of our senses. Yet, if 
the current doctrine of evolution be true, we have 
no choice but to admit that with the great mass of 
natural fact we are probably brought into no sensi- 
ble relation at all. I am not referring here merely 
to the limitations imposed upon such senses as we 
possess, but to the total absence of an indefinite 
number of senses which conceivably we might pos- 
sess, but do not. There are sounds which the ear 
cannot hear, there are sights which the eye cannot 
see. But besides all these there must be countless 
aspects of external Nature of which we have no 
knowledge ; of which, owing to the absence of ap- 
propriate organs, we can form no conception ; which 
imagination cannot picture nor language express. 
Had Voltaire been acquainted with the theory of 
evolution, he would not have put forward his Mi- 
cromegas so much as an illustration of a paradox 
which cannot be disproved, as of a truth which can- 
not be doubted. For to suppose that a course of 
development carried out, not with the object of ex- 
tending knowledge or satisfying curiosity, but solely 
with that of promoting life, on an area so insig- 
nificant as the surface of the earth, between limits 
of temperature and pressure so narrow, and under 
general conditions so exceptional, should have end- 
ed in supplying us with senses even approximately 



70 NATURALISM AND REASON 

adequate to the apprehension of Nature in all her 
complexities, is to believe in a coincidence more as- 
tounding than the most audacious novelist has ever 
employed to cut the knot of some entangled tale. 

For it must be recollected that the same natural 
forces which tend to the evolution of organs which 
are useful tend also to the suppression of organs 
that are useless. Not only does Nature take no 
interest in our general education, not only is she 
quite indifferent to the growth of enlightenment, un- 
less the enlightenment improve our chances in the 
struggle for existence, but she positively objects to 
the very existence of faculties by which these ends 
might, perhaps, be attained. She regards them as 
mere hindrances in the only race which she desires 
to see run ; and not content with refusing directly 
to create any faculty except for a practical pur- 
pose, she immediately proceeds to destroy faculties 
already created when their practical purpose has 
ceased ; for thus does the eye of the cave-born fish 
degenerate and the instinct of the domesticated 
animal decay. Those, then, who are inclined to the 
opinion that between our organism and its environ- 
ments there is a correspondence which, from the 
point of view of general knowledge, is even approx- 
imately adequate, must hold, in the first place, that 
samples or suggestions of every sort of natural man- 
ifestation are to be found in our narrow and limited 
world ; in the second place, that these samples are of 
a character which would permit of nervous tissue 



NATURALISM AND REASON , 7 1 

being so modified by selection as to respond specifi- 
cally to their action ; in the third place, that such 
specific modifications were not only possible, but 
would have proved useful at the period of evolution 
during- which our senses in their present shape were 
developed ; and in the fourth place, that these modi- 
fications would have proved useful enough to make 
it worth while to use up, for the purpose of produc- 
ing them, material which might have been, and has 
been, otherwise employed. 

All these propositions seem to me improbable, 
the first two of them incredible.^ It is impossible, 

^ It may perhaps be said that it is not necessary that we should be 
specifically affected by each particular kind of energy in order either 
to discover its existence or to investigate its character. It is enough 
that among its effects should be some which are cognisable by our 
actual senses, that it should modify in some way the world we know, 
that it should intervene perceptibly in that part of the general system 
to which our organism happens to be immediately connected. This 
is no doubt true, and our knowledge of electricity and magnetism 
(among other things) is there to prove it. But let it be noted how 
slender and how accidental was the clue which led us to the first 
beginnings, from which all our knowledge of these great phenomena 
is derived. Directly they can hardly be said to be in relation with 
our organs of perception at all (notwithstanding the fact that light is 
now regarded as an electro-magnetic phenomenon) and their indirect 
relation with them is so slight that probably no amount of mere obser- 
vation could, in the absence of experiment, have given us a notion of 
their magnitude or importance. They were not sought for to fill a 
gap whose existence had been demonstrated by calculation. Their 
discovery was no inevitable step in the onward march of scientific 
knowledge. They were stumbled upon by accident ; and few would 
be bold enough to assert that if, for example, the human race had 
not happened to possess iron, magnetism would ever have presented 
itself as a subject requiring investigation at all. 



72 NATURALISM AND REASON 

therefore, to resist the conviction that there must be 
an indefinite number of aspects of Nature respecting 
which science never can give us any information, 
even in our dreams. We must conceive ourselves as 
feeling our way about this dim corner of the il- 
limitable world, like children in a darkened room, 
encompassed by we know not what ; a little better 
endowed with the machinery of sensation than the 
protozoon, yet poorly provided indeed as compared 
with a being, if such a one could be conceived, 
whose senses were adequate to the infinite variety 
of material Nature. It is true, no doubt, that we 
are possessed of reason, and that protozoa are not. 
But even reason, on the naturalistic theory, occupies 
no elevated or permanent position in the hierarchy 
of phenomena. It is not the final result of a great 
process, the roof and crown of things. On the con- 
trary, it is, as I have said, no more than one of many 
experiments for increasing our chance of survival, 
and, among these, by no means the most important 
or the most enduring. 

II 

People sometimes talk, indeed, as if it was the 
difficult and complex work connected with the main- 
tenance of life that was performed by intellect. But 
there can be no greater delusion. The management 
of the humblest organ would be infinitely beyond 
our mental capacity, were it possible for us to be 



NATURALISM AND REASON 73 

entrusted with it ; and as a matter of fact, it is only 
in the simplest jobs that discursive reason is per- 
mitted to have a hand at all ; our tendency to take 
a different view being merely the self-importance of 
a child who, because it is allowed to stamp the let- 
ters, imagines that it conducts the correspondence. 
The best way of looking at mind on the naturalistic 
hypothesis is, perhaps, to regard it as an instrument 
for securing a flexibility of adaptation which instinct 
alone is not able to attain. Instinct is incompa- 
rably the better machine in every respect save one. 
It works more smoothly, with less friction, with far 
greater precision and accuracy. But it is not adapt- 
able. Many generations and much slaughter are re- 
quired to breed it into a race. Once acquired, it can 
be modified or expelled only by the same harsh and 
tedious methods. Mind, on the other hand, from 
the point of view of organic evolution, may be con- 
sidered as an inherited faculty for self-adjustment; 
and though, as I have already had occasion to note, 
the limits within which such adjustment is permit- 
ted are exceedingly narrow, within those limits it is 
doubtless exceedingly valuable. 

But even here one of the principal functions of 
mind is to create habits by which, when they are 
fully formed, it is itself supplanted. If the conscious 
adaptation of means to ends was always necessary 
in order to perform even those few functions for the 
first performance of which conscious adaptation was 
originally required, life would be frittered away in 



74 NATURALISM AND REASON 

doing badly, but with deliberation, some small frac- 
tion of that which we now do well without any 
deliberation at all. The formation of habits is, there- 
fore, as has often been pointed out, a necessary pre- 
liminary to the ' higher ' uses of mind ; for it, and it 
alone, sets attention and intelligence free to do work 
from which they would otherwise be debarred by 
their absorption in the petty needs of daily exist- 
ence. 

But while it is thus plain that the formation of 
habits is an essential pre-requisite of mental develop- 
ment, it would also seem that it constitutes the 
first step in a process which, if thoroughly success- 
ful, would end in the destruction, if not of conscious- 
ness itself, at least of the higher manifestation of 
consciousness, such as will, attention, and discur- 
sive reason.^ All these, as we may suppose, will be 
gradually superseded in an increasing number of 
departments of human activity by the growth of in- 
stincts or inherited habits, by which even such adjust- 
ments between the organism and its surroundings as 
now seem most dependent on self-conscious mind 
may be successfully effected. 

These are prophecies, however, which concern 
themselves with a very remote future, and for my 
part I do not ask the reader to regard their fulfil- 
ment as an inexorable necessity. It is enough if 

^ Empirical psychologists are not agreed as to whether the ap- 
parent unconsciousness which accompanies completed habits is real 
or not. It is unnecessary for the purpose of my argument that this 
point should be determined. 



NATURALISM AND REASON 75 

they mark with sufficient emphasis the place which 
Mind, in its higher manifestations, occupies in the 
scheme of things, as this is presented to us by the 
naturalistic hypothesis. Mr. Spencer, who pierces 
the future with a surer gaze than I can make the 
least pretence to, looks confidently forward to a time 
when the relation of man to his surroundings will be 
so happily contrived that the reign of absolute right- 
eousness will prevail ; conscience, grown unneces- 
sary, will be dispensed with ; the path of least 
resistance will be the path of virtue ; and not the 
' broad,* but the ' narrow way,' will * lead to destruc- 
tion.' These excellent consequences seem to me 
to flow very smoothly and satisfactorily from his 
particular doctrine of evolution, combined with his 
particular doctrine of morals. But I confess that my 
own personal gratification at the prospect is some- 
what dimmed by the reflection that the same kind 
of causes which make conscience superfluous will 
relieve us from the necessity of intellectual effort, 
and that by the time we are all perfectly good we 
shall also be all perfectly idiotic. 

I know not how it may strike the reader ; but I 
at least am left sensibly poorer b)^ this deposition of 
Reason from its ancient position as the Ground of 
all existence, to that of an expedient among other 
expedients for the maintenance of organic life ; an ex- 
pedient, moreover, which is temporary in its charac- 
ter and insignificant in its effects. An irrational 
Universe which accidentally turns out a few reason- 



^6 NATURALISM AND REASON 

ing animals at one corner of it, as a rich man may 
experiment at one end of his park with some curious 
' sport ' accidentally produced among his flocks and 
herds, is a Universe which we might well despise if 
we did not ourselves share its degradation. But 
must we not inevitably share it? Pascal somewhere 
observes that Man, however feeble, is yet in his very- 
feebleness superior to the blind forces of Nature ; 
for he knows himself, and they do not. I confess that 
on the naturalistic hypothesis I see no such superi- 
ority. If, indeed, there were a Rational Author of 
Nature, and if in any degree, even the most insig- 
nificant, we shared His attributes, we might well 
conceive ourselves as of finer essence and more in- 
trinsic worth than the material world which we in- 
habit, immeasurable though it may be. But if we 
be the creation of that world; if it made us what 
we are, and will again unmake us ; how then ? The 
sense of humour, not the least precious among the 
gifts with which the clash of atoms has endowed 
us, should surely prevent us assuming any airs of 
superiority over members of the same family of 
'phenomena,* more permanent and more powerful 
than ourselves. 



CHAPTER IV 

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I 

I HAVE now completed my survey of certain opin- 
ions which naturalism seems to require us to hold 
respecting important matters connected with Right- 
eousness, Beauty, and Reason. The survey has 
necessarily been concise ; but, concise though it has 
been, it has, perhaps, sufficiently indicated the inner 
antagonism which exists between the Naturalistic 
system and the feelings which the best among man- 
kind, including many who may be counted as adhe- 
rents of that system, have hitherto considered as the 
most valuable possessions of our race. If natural- 
ism be true, or, rather, if it be the whole truth, then 
is morality but a bare catalogue of utilitarian pre- 
cepts ; beauty but the chance occasion of a passing 
pleasure ; reason but the dim passage from one set 
of unthinking habits to another. All that gives dig- 
nity to life, all that gives value to effort, shrinks and 
fades under the pitiless glare of a creed like this ; 
and even curiosity, the hardiest among the nobler 
passions of the soul, must languish under the con- 
viction that neither for this generation nor for any 
that shall come after it, neither in this life nor in 



78 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I 

another, will the tie be wholly loosened by which 
reason, not less than appetite, is held in hereditary 
bondage to the service of our material needs. 

I am anxious, however, not to overstate my case. 
It is of course possible, to take for a moment assthet- 
ics as our text, that whatever be our views concern- 
ing naturalism, we shall still like good poetry and 
good music, and that we shall not, perhaps, find if 
we sum up our pleasures at the year's end, that the 
total satisfaction derived from the contemplation of 
Art and Nature is very largely diminished by the 
fact that our philosophy allows us to draw no im- 
portant distinction between the beauties of a sauce 
and the beauties of a symphony. Both may con- 
tinue to afford the man with a good palate and a 
good ear a considerable amount of satisfaction ; and 
if all we desire is to find in literature and in art 
something that will help us either *to enjoy life or 
to endure it,' I do not contend that, by any theory 
of the beautiful, of this we shall wholly be deprived. 

Nevertheless there is, even so, a loss not lightly 
to be underrated, a loss that falls alike on him that 
produces and on him that enjoys. Poets and artists 
have been wont to consider themselves, and to be 
considered by others, as prophets and seers, the re- 
vealers under sensuous forms of hidden mysteries, 
the symbolic preachers of eternal truths. All this 
is, of course, on the naturalistic theory, very absurd. 
They minister, no doubt, with success to some phase, 
usually a very transitory phase, of public taste ; but 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I 79 

they have no mysteries to reveal, and what they tell 
us, though it may be very agreeable, is seldom true, 
and never important. This is a conclusion which, 
howsoever it may accord with sound philosophy, is 
not likely to prove very stimulating to the artist, nor 
does it react with less unfortunate effect upon those 
to whom the artist appeals. Even if their feeling of 
delight in the beautiful is not marred for them in 
immediate experience, it must suffer in memory and 
reflection. For such a feeling carries with it, at its 
best, an inevitable reference, not less inevitable be- 
cause it is obscure, to a Reality which is eternal and 
unchanging ; and we cannot accept without suffer- 
ing the conviction that in making such a reference 
we were merely the dupes of our emotions, the vic- 
tims of a temporary hallucination induced, as it were, 
by some spiritual drug. 

But if on the naturalistic hypothesis the senti- 
ments associated with beauty seem like a poor jest 
played on us by Nature for no apparent purpose, 
those that gather round morality are, so to speak, a 
deliberate fraud perpetrated for a well-defined end. 
The consciousness of freedom, the sense of respon- 
sibility, the authority of conscience, the beauty of 
holiness, the admiration for self-devotion, the sym- 
pathy with suffering — these and all the train of be- 
liefs and feelings from which spring noble deeds and 
generous ambitions are seen to be mere devices for 
securing to societies, if not to individuals, some 
competitive advantage in the struggle for existence. 



80 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I 

They are not worse, but neither are they better 
than the thousand-and-one appetites and instincts, 
many of them, as I have said, cruel, and many of 
them disgusting, created by similar causes in order 
to carry out through all organic Nature the like un- 
profitable ends ; and if we think them better, as in 
our unreflecting moments we are apt to do, this, on 
the Naturalistic hypothesis, is only because some 
delusion of the kind is necessary in order to induce 
us to perform actions which in themselves can con- 
tribute nothing to our personal gratification. 

The inner discord which finds expression in con- 
clusions like these largely arises, as the reader sees, 
from a want of balance or proportion between the 
range of our intellectual vision and the circum- 
stances of our actual existence. Our capacity for 
standing outside ourselves and taking stock of the 
position which we occupy in the universe of things 
has been enormously and, it would seem, unfort- 
unately, increased by recent scientific discovery. 
We have learned too much. We are educated above 
that station in life in which it has pleased Nature 
to place us. We can no longer accept it without 
criticism and without examination. We insist on 
interrogating that material system which, according 
to naturalism, is the true author of our being as to 
whence we come and whither we go, what are the 
causes which have made us what we are, and what 
are the purposes which our existence subserves. 
And it must be confessed that the answers given to 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I 8 1 

this question by our oracle are extremely unsatis- 
factory. We have learned to measure space, and 
we perceive that our dwelling-place is but a mere 
point, wandering with its companions, apparently 
at random, through the wilderness of stars. We 
have learned to measure time, and we perceive that 
the life not merely of the individual or of the nation, 
but of the whole race, is brief, and apparently quite 
unimportant. We have learned to unravel causes, 
and we perceive that emotions and aspirations 
whose very being seems to hang on the existence 
of realities of which naturalism takes no account, 
are in their origin contemptible and in their sug- 
gestion mendacious. 

To me it appears certain that this clashing be- 
tween beliefs and feelings must ultimately prove 
fatal to one or the other. Make what allowance 
you please for the stupidity of mankind, take the 
fullest account of their really remarkable power of 
letting their speculative opinions follow one line of 
development and their practical ideals another, yet 
the time must come when reciprocal action will 
perforce bring opinions and ideals into some kind of 
agreement and congruity. If, then, naturalism is to 
hold the field, the feelings and opinions inconsist- 
ent with naturalism must be foredoomed to suffer 
change ; and how, when that change shall come 
about, it can do otherwise than eat all nobility out of 
our conception of conduct and all worth out of our 
conception of life, I am wholly unable to understand. 



82 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I 

I am aware that many persons are in the habit 
of subjecting these views to an experimental refuta- 
tion by pointing to a great many excellent people 
who hold, in more or less purity, the naturalistic 
creed, but who, nevertheless, offer prominent ex- 
amples of that habit of mind with which, as I have 
been endeavouring to show, the naturalistic creed is 
essentially inconsistent. Naturalism — so runs the 
argument — co-exists in the case of Messrs. A., B., 
C, &c., with the most admirable exhibition of un- 
selfish virtue. If this be so in the case of a hundred 
individuals, why not in the case of ten thousand? 
If in the case of ten thousand, why not in the case 
of humanity at large ? Now, to the facts on which 
this reasoning proceeds I raise no objection. I de- 
sire neither to ignore the existence nor to mini- 
mise the merits of these shining examples of virtue 
unsupported by religion. But though the facts be 
true, the reasoning based on them will not bear 
close examination. Biologists tell us of parasites 
which live, and can only live, within the bodies of 
animals more highly organised than they. For 
them their luckless host has to find food, to digest 
it, and to convert it into nourishment which they 
can consume without exertion and assimilate with- 
out difficulty. Their structure is of the simplest 
kind. Their host sees for them, so they need no 
eyes ; he hears for them, so they need no ears ; he 
works for them and contrives for them, so they 
need but feeble muscles and an undeveloped ner- 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I 83 

vous system. But are we to conclude from this that 
for the animal kingdom eyes and ears, powerful 
limbs and complex nerves, are superfluities ? They 
are superfluities for the parasite only because they 
have first been necessities for the host, and when 
the host perishes the parasite, in their absence, is 
not unlikely to perish also. 

So it is with those persons who claim to show by 
their example that naturalism is practically consistent 
with the maintenance of ethical ideals with which 
naturalism has no natural affinity. Their spiritual 
life is parasitic : it is sheltered by convictions which 
belong, not to them, but to the society of which they 
form a part ; it is nourished by processes in which 
they take no share. And when those convictions 
decay, and those processes come to an end, the alien 
life which they have maintained can scarce be ex- 
pected to outlast them. 

I am not aware that anyone has as yet en- 
deavoured to construct the catechism of the future, 
purged of every element drawn from any other 
source than the naturalistic creed. It is greatly to 
be desired that this task should be undertaken in an 
impartial spirit ; and as a small contribution to such 
an object, I offer the following pairs of contrasted 
propositions, the first member of each pair repre- 
senting current teaching, the second representing the 
teaching which ought to be substituted for it if the 
naturalistic theory be accepted. 

A. The universe is the creation of Reason, and 



84 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I 

all things work together towards a reasonable 
end. 

B. So far as we are concerned, reason is to he found 
neither in the beginning of things nor in their end ; and 
though everything is predetermined, nothing is fore- 
ordained, 

A. Creative reason is interfused with infinite 
love. 

B. As reason is absent, so also is love. The universal 
flux is ordered by blind causation alone. 

A. There is a moral law, immutable, eternal ; in 
its governance all spirits find their true freedom 
and their most perfect realisation. Though it be 
adequate to infinite goodness and infinite intelli- 
gence, it may be understood, even by man, suffi- 
ciently for his guidance. 

B. Among the causes by which the course of organic 
and social development has been blindly determined are 
pains, pleasures, instincts, appetites, disgusts, religions, 
moralities, superstitions ; the sentiment of what is noble 
and ifitrinsically worthy ; the se?ttiment of what is 
ignoble and intrinsically worthless. From a purely 
scientific point of view these all stand on an equality ; 
all are action-producing causes developed, not to improve, 
but simply to perpetuate, the species. 

A. In the possession of reason and in the enjoy- 
ment of beauty, we in some remote way share the 
nature of that infinite Personality in Whom we live 
and move and have our being. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I 85 

B. Reaso7i is but the psychological expression of cer- 
tain physiological processes ill the cerebral hemispheres ; 
it is no more than an expedient among many expedients 
by which the individual and the race are preserved ; 
Just as Beauty is no more tJian the name for such vary- 
ing and accideiital attributes of the material or moral 
worlds as may happen for the moment to stir our 
aesthetic feelings, 

A. Every human soul is of infinite value, eternal, 
free ; no human being, therefore, is so placed as not 
to have within his reach, in himself and others, ob- 
jects adequate to infinite endeavour. 

B. The individual perishes ; the race itself does not 
endure. Few can flatter themselves that their coftdtict 
has any appreciable effect upon its remoter destinies; 
and of those few, none ca7i say with reasonable assur- 
ance that the effect which they are destined to produce 
is the one which they desire. Even if we were free^ 
therefore, our ignorance would make us helpless ; and it 
may be almost a consolation to reflect that our conduct 
was determined for us by unthinking forces in a remote 
past, and that if we are impotent to foresee its conse- 
quences, we were not less impotent to arrange its causes. 

The doctrines embodied in the second member 
of each of these alternatives may be true, or may 
at least represent the nearest approach to truth of 
which we are at present capable. Into this question 
I do not yet inquire. But if they are to constitute 
the dogmatic scaffolding by which our educational 
system is to be supported ; if it is to be in harmony 



86 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF PART I 



with principles like these that the child is to be 
taught at its mother's knee, and the young man is to 
build up the ideals of his life, then, unless I greatly 
mistake, it will be found that the inner discord which 
exists, and which must gradually declare itself, be- 
tween the emotions proper to naturalism and those 
which have actually grown up under the shadow of 
traditional convictions, will at no distant date most 
unpleasantly translate itself into practice. 



PART II 

SOME REASONS FOR BELIEF 



I 



CHAPTER I 

THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 



So far we have been occupied in weighing certain 
indirect and collateral consequences which seem 
likely to flow from a particular theory of the world 
in which we live. The theory itself was taken for 
granted. No attempt was made to examine its 
foundations or to test their strength ; no compari- 
son between its different parts was instituted for 
the purpose of determining how far they really con- 
stituted a coherent and intelligible whole. We 
accepted it as we found it, turning with averted 
eyes even from the speculative problems which lay 
closest to the track of our immediate investigation. 
This course is not the most logical ; and it might 
perhaps appear a more fitting procedure to reserve 
our consideration of the consequences of a system 
until some conclusion had been arrived at concern- 
ing its truth. Such, however, is not the ordinary 
habit of mankind in dealing with problems in which 
questions of abstract theory and daily practice are 
closely intertwined ; and even philosophers show a 
kindly reluctance too closely to examine the claims 
of creeds whose consequences are in strict accord 
with contemporary sentiment. I have a better rea- 
son, however, to offer for the order here selected than 



90 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

can be derived from precedent or example, a reason 
based on the fact that, had I begun these Notes with 
the discussion on which I am about to embark, their 
whole character would probably have been misunder- 
stood. They would have been regarded as contribu- 
tions to philosophical discussion of a kind which 
would only interest the specialist ; and the general 
reader, to whom I desire particularly to appeal, would 
have abandoned their perusal in disgust. For I can- 
not deny, either that I am about to ask him to ac- 
company me in a search after first principles ; or 
(which is, perhaps, worse) that the search is destined 
to be ineffectual. He will not only have to occupy 
himself with arguments of a remote and abstract kind, 
and for a moment to disturb the placid depths of 
ordinary thought with unaccustomed soundings, but 
the arguments will be to all appearance barren, and 
the soundings will not find bottom. The full justifi- 
cation for a procedure seemingly so futile can only 
be found in the chapters which follow, and in the 
general drift of the discussion taken as a whole ; but 
in the meanwhile the reader will be able to appre- 
ciate my immediate object if he will bear in mind 
the precise point at which we have arrived. 

Let him remember, then, that the result of the 
inquiry instituted into the practical tendencies of 
the naturalistic theory is to show them to be well-nigh 
intolerable. The theory, no doubt, may for all that 
be true, since it must candidly be admitted that there 
is no naturalistic reason for anticipating any pre- 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 9I 

established harmony between truth and expediency 
in the higher regions of speculation. But at least 
we are called upon to make a very searching inquiry 
before we admit that it is true. We are not here 
concerned with any mere curiosity of dialectics, with 
the quest for a kind of knowledge which, however 
interesting to the few, yet bears no fruit for ordinary 
human use. On the contrary, the issues that have 
to be decided are practical, if anything is practical. 
They touch at every point the most permanent in- 
terests of man, individual and social ; and any pro- 
cedure is preferable to a complacent acquiescence in 
the loss of all the fairest provinces in our spiritual 
inheritance. 

This is a fact which has long been perceived by 
the defenders of all the creeds, philosophical or 
theological, with which the pretensions of naturalism 
are in conflict. You will not open a modern work 
of apologetics, for instance, without finding in it some 
endeavour to show that the naturalistic theory is 
insufficient, and that it requires to be supplemented 
by precisely the very system in whose interests that 
particular work was written. This, no doubt, is as 
it should be ; and on this plan a great deal of valu- 
able criticism and interesting speculation has been 
produced. It is not, however, exactly the plan which 
can be here pursued, partly because these Notes con- 
tain, not a system of theology, but only an introduc- 
tion to theology ; and partly because I have always 
[ound it easier to satisfy myself of the insufficiency 



92 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

of naturalism than of the absolute sufficiency of any 
of the schemes by which it has been sought to modify 
or to complete it. 

In this chapter, however, I shall follow an easier 
line of march, the nature of which the reader will 
readily understand if he considers the two elements 
composing the naturalistic creed : the one positive, 
consisting, broadly speaking, of the teaching con- 
tained in the general body of the natural sciences ; 
the other negative, expressed in the doctrine that 
beyond these limits, wherever they may happen to 
lie, nothing is, and nothing can be, known. Now, 
the usual practice with those who dissent from this 
general view is, as I have said, to choose the sec- 
ond, or negative, half of it for attack. They tell us, 
for example, that the knowledge of phenomena 
given by science carries with it by necessary impli- 
cation the knowledge of that which is above phe- 
nomena; or, again, that the moral nature of man 
points to the reality of ends and principles which 
cannot be exhausted by any investigation into a 
merely natural world of causally related objects. 
Without the least underrating such lines of investi- 
gation, I purpose here to consider, not the negative, 
but the positive half of the naturalistic system. I 
shall leave for the moment unchallenged the state- 
ment that beyond the natural sciences knowledge is 
impossible ; but I shall venture, instead, to ask a few 
questions as to the character of the knowledge 
which is thought to be obtained within those limits, 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 93 

I shall not endeavour to prove that a scheme of 
merely positive beliefs, admirable, no doubt, as far 
as it goes, is yet intellectually insufficient unless it 
be supplemented by a metaphysical or theological 
appendix. But I shall examine the foundations of 
the scheme itself; and though such criticisms on it 
as I shall be able to offer can never be a substitute 
for the real work of philosophic construction, they 
would seem to be its fitting preliminary, and a pre- 
liminary which the succeeding chapters may show 
to be not without a profit of its own. 

One great metaphysician has described the sys- 
tem of another as ' shot out of a pistol,' meaning 
thereby that it was presented for acceptance with- 
out introductory proof. The criticism is true not 
only of the particular theory of the Absolute about 
which it was first used, but about every system, or 
almost every system, of belief which has ever passed 
current among mankind. Some subtle analogy with 
accepted doctrines, some general harmony with ex- 
isting sentiments and modes of thought, has not un- 
commonly been deemed sufficient to justify the most 
audacious conjectures ; and the history of specula- 
tion is littered with theories whose authors seem 
never to have suffered under any overmastering need 
to prove the opinions which they advanced. No 
such overmastering need has, at least, been felt in 
the case of ' positive knowledge,* and the very cir- 
cumstance that, alike in its methods and in its results, 
all men are practically agreed to accept it without 



94 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

demur, has blinded them to the fact that it, too, has 
been * shot out of a pistol,' and that, like some more 
questionable beliefs, it is still waiting for a rational 
justification. 

^ [For our too easy acquiescence in this state of 
things I do not think science is itself to blame. It is 
no part of its duty to deal with first principles. Its 
business is to provide us with a theory of Nature ; 
and it should not be required, in addition, to pro- 
vide us with a theory of itself. This is a task which 
properly devolves upon the masters of speculation ; 
though it is one which, for various reasons, they have 
not as yet satisfactorily accomplished. I doubt, in- 
deed, whether any metaphysical philosopher before 
Kant can be said to have made contributions to this 
subject which at the present day need be taken into 
serious account ; and, as I shall endeavour to indicate 
in the next chapter, Kant's doctrines, even as modi- 
fied by his successors, do not, so it seems to me, pro- 
vide a sound basis for an ' epistemology of Nature.' 

But if in this connection we owe little to the 
metaphysical philosophers, we owe still less to those 
in whom we had a better right to trust, namely, the 
empirical ones. If the former have to some extent 
neglected the theory of science for theories of the 
Absolute, the latter have always shown an inclination 

^ The remarks on the history of philosophy which occupy the 
remainder of this section are not essential to the argument, and may 
be omitted by readers uninterested in that subject. The strictly 
necessary discussion is resumed on p. loo. 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 95 

to sacrifice the theory of knowledge itself to theories 
as to the genesis or growth of knowledge. They 
have contented themselves with investigating the 
primitive elements from which have been developed 
in the race and in the individual the completed 
consciousness of ourselves and of the world in which 
we live. They have, therefore, dealt with the origins 
of what we believe rather than with its justification. 
They have substituted psychology for philosophy ; 
they have presented us, in short, with studies in a 
particular branch or department of science, rather 
than with an examination into the grounds of science 
in general. And when perforce they are brought 
face to face with some of the problems connected 
with the philosophy of science which most loudly 
clamour for solution, there is something half-pathetic 
and half-humorous in their methods of cutting a knot 
which they are quite unable to untie. Can anything, 
for example, be more naive than the undisturbed 
serenity with which Locke, towards the end of his 
great work, assures his readers that he * suspects that 
natural philosophy is not capable of being made a 
science ' ; or, as I should prefer to state it, that nat- 
ural science is not capable of being made a philoso- 
phy ? Or can anything be more characteristic than 
the moral which he draws from this rather surprising 
admission, namely, that as we are so little fitted to 
frame theories about this present world, we had bet- 
ter devote our energies to preparing for the next ? 
This remarkable display of philosophic resignation 



96 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

in the father of modern empiricism has been imi- 
tated, with differences, by a long line of distin- 
guished successors. Hume, for example, though 
naturally enough he declined to draw Locke's edify- 
ing conclusion, did more than anyone else to estab- 
lish Locke's despairing premise ; and his inferences 
from it are at least equally singular. Having re- 
duced our belief in the fundamental principles of sci- 
entific interpretation to expectations born of habit ; 
having reduced the world which is to be interpreted 
to an unrelated series of impressions and ideas ; hav- 
ing by this double process made experience impossi- 
ble and turned science into foolishness, he quietly 
informs us, as the issue of the whole matter, that 
outside experience and science knowledge is impos- 
sible, and that all except ' mathematical demonstra- 
tion * and * experimental reasoning ' on ' matters of 
fact ' is sophistry and illusion ! 

I think too well of Hume's speculative genius 
and too ill of his speculative sincerity to doubt that 
in making this statement he spoke, not as a philoso- 
pher, but as a man of the world, making formal 
obeisance to the powers that be. But what he said 
half ironically, his followers have said with an un- 
shaken seriousness. Nothing in the history of specu- 
lation is more astonishing, nothing — if I am to speak 
my whole mind — is more absurd than the way in 
which Hume's philosophic progen}- — a most distin- 
guished race — have, in spite of all their differences, 
yet been able to agree, both that experience is essen- 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 9/ 

tially as Hume described it, and that from such an 
experience can be rationally extracted anything even 
in the remotest degree resembling the existing sys- 
tem of the natural sciences. Like Locke, these gen- 
tlemen, or some of them, have, indeed, been assailed 
by momentary misgivings. It seems occasionally to 
have occurred to them that if their theory of knowl- 
edge were adequate, ' experimental reasoning,' as 
Hume called it, was in a very parlous state ; and 
that, on the merits, nothing less deserved to be 
held with a positive conviction than what some of 
them are wont to describe as '■ positive ' knowledge. 
But they have soon thrust away such unwelcome 
thoughts. The self-satisfied dogmatism which is so 
convenient, and, indeed, so necessary a habit in the 
daily routine of life, has resumed its sway. They 
have forgotten that they were philosophers, and 
with true practical instincts have reserved their 'ob- 
stinate questionings ' exclusively for the benefit of 
opinions from which they were already predisposed 
to differ. 

Whether these historic reasons fully account for 
the comparative neglect of a philosophy of science 
I will not venture to pronounce. But that the 
neglect has been real I cannot doubt. Admirable 
generalisations of the actual methods of scientific 
research, usually under some such name as ' Induc- 
tive Logic,' we have no doubt had in abundance. 
But a full and systematic attempt, first to enumerate, 
and then to justify, the presuppositions on which all 
7 



98 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

science finally rests, has, it seems to me, still to be 
made, and must form no insignificant or secondary 
portion of the task which philosophy has yet to 
perform. To some, perhaps to most, it may, indeed, 
appear as if such a task were one of perverse fu- 
tility ; not more useful and much less dignified than 
metaphysical investigations into the nature of the 
Absolute. However profitless in the opinion of the 
objector these may be, at least it seems better to 
strain after the transcendent than to demonstrate 
the obvious. And science, it may well be thought, 
is quite sure enough of its ground to be justified in 
politely bowing out those who thus officiously ten- 
der it a perfectly superfluous assistance. 

This is a contention on the merits of which it 
will only be possible to pronounce after the critical 
examination into the presuppositions of science 
which I desiderate has been thoroughly carried out. 
It may then appear that nothing stands more in need 
of demonstration than the obvious ; that at the very 
root of our scientific system of belief lie problems of 
which no satisfactory solution has hitherto been 
devised ; and that, so far from its being possible 
to ignore the difficulties which these involve, no 
general theory of knowledge has the least chance of 
being successful which does not explicitly include 
within the circuit of its criticism, not only the beliefs 
which seem to us to be dubious, but those also 
which we hold with the most perfect practical 
assurance. 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 99 

So much, at least, I have endeavoured to estab- 
lish in another work to which reference has been 
already made.^ And to this I must venture to refer 
those readers who either wish to see this position 
elaborately developed, or who are of opinion that I 
have in the preceding remarks treated the philosophy 
of the empirical school with too scant a measure of 
respect. The very technical discussion, however, 
which it contains could not, I think, be made inter- 
esting, or perhaps intelligible, to the majority of those 
for whom this book is intended, and, even were it 
otherwise, they could not appropriately be intro- 
duced into the body of these Notes. Yet, though 
this is impossible, it ought not, I think, to be quite 
impossible to convey some general notion of the 
sort of difficulty with which any empirical theory 
of science would seem to be beset, and this without 
requiring on the part of the reader any special 
knowledge of philosophic terminology, or, indeed, 
any knowledge at all except that of some few very 
general scientific doctrines. If I could succeed, 
however imperfectly, in such a task, it might be of 
some slight service even to the reader conversant 
with empirical theories in all their various forms. 
For though he will, of course, recognise in what 
follows the familiar faces of many old controversies, 
the circumstance that they are here approached, not 
from the accustomed side of the psychology of per- 
ception, but from that of physics and physiology, 

L 01 C. 

^ Cf. Prefatory Note. 



100 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

may perhaps give them a freshness they would not 
otherwise possess.] 

II 

In order to fix our ideas let us recall, in however 
rough and incomplete a form, the broad outlines of 
scientific doctrine as it at present exists, and as it 
has been developed from that unorganised knowl- 
edge of a world of objects — animals, mountains, men, 
planets, trees, water, fire, and so forth — which in some 
degree or other all mankind possess. These objects 
science conceives as ordered and mutually related 
in one unlimited space and one unlimited time ; all 
in their true reality independent of the presence or 
absence of any observer, all governed in their be- 
haviour by rigid and unvarying laws. These are its 
material ; these it is its business to describe. Their 
appearance, their inner constitution, their environ- 
ment, the process of their development, the modes 
in which they act and are acted upon — such and 
such-like subjects of inquiry constitute the problems 
which science has set itself to investigate. 

The result of its investigations is now embodied 
in a general, if provisional, view of the (phenomenal) 
universe which may be accepted at least as a working 
hypothesis. According to this view, the world con- 
sists essentially of innumerable small particles of 
definite mass, endowed with a variety of mechanical, 
chemical, and other qualities, and forming by their 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM lOI 

mutual association the various bodies which we can 
handle and see, and many others which we can 
neither handle nor see. These ponderable particles 
have their being in a diffused and all-penetrating 
medium, or ether, which possesses, or behaves as if 
it possessed, certain mechanical properties of a very 
remarkable character ; while the whole of this ma- 
terial system, ponderable particles and ether alike, 
is animated (if the phrase may be permitted me) by 
a quantity of energy which, though it varies in the 
manner and place of its manifestation, yet never 
varies in its total amount. It only remains to add, 
as a fact of considerable importance to ourselves, 
though of little apparent importance to the universe 
at large, that a few of the material particles above 
alluded to are arranged into living organisms, and 
that among these organisms are a small minority 
which have the remarkable power of extracting from 
the changes which take place in certain of their 
tissues psychical phenomena of various kinds; some 
of which are the reflection, or partial reproductK)n 

^ This ambiguity in the use of the word * matter ' is apt to be a 
nuisance in these discussions. The term is sometimes, and quite 
properly, used only of ponderable matter, and in opposition to ether. 
But when we talk of the ' material universe,' it is absurd to exclude 
from our meaning the ether, which is the most important part of that 
universe. The context will, I hope, always show in which sense the 
word is used. I should perhaps add that I have deliberately refrained 
from complicating the text by any allusion to recent hypotheses as 
to the nature of the ether and its relation to ponderable matter or to 
recent discoveries respecting the divisibility of the atom. 



I02 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

in perception and in thought, of fragments and 
aspects of that material world to which they owe 
their being. 

Secure in this general view of things, the great 
co-operative work of scientific investigation moves 
swiftly on. The psychologist deals with the laws 
governing mental phenomena and with the relations 
of mind and body ; the physiologist endeavours to 
surprise the secrets of the living organ ; the biologist 
traces the development of the individual and the mu- 
tations of the species ; the chemist searches out the 
laws which govern the combination and reactions of 
atoms and molecules; the astronomer investigates 
the movements and the life-histories of suns and 
planets ; while the physicist explores the inmost mys- 
teries of matter and energy, not unprepared to dis- 
cover behind the invisible particles and the insensible 
movements with which he familiarly deals, explana- 
tions of the material universe yet more remote from 
the unsophisticated perceptions of ordinary mankind. 

The philosophic reader is of course aware that 
many of the terms which I have used, and been 
obliged to use, in this outline of the scientific view 
of the universe may be, and have been, subjected to 
philosophic analysis, and often with very curious 
results. Space, time, matter, energy, cause, quality, 
idea, perception — all these, to mention no others, are 
expressions without the aid of which no account 
could be given of the circle of the sciences; though 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM I03 

every one of them suggests a multitude of specula- 
tive problems, of which speculation has not as yet 
succeeded in giving us the final and decisive solu- 
tion. These problems, for the most part, however, 
I put on one side.^ I take these terms as I find 
them ; in the sense, that is, which everybody attrib- 
utes to them until he begins to puzzle himself with 
too curious inquiries into their precise meaning. No 
such embarrassing investigations do I here wish to 
impose upon my reader. It shall for the present be 
agreed between us that the body of doctrine sum- 
marised above is, so far as it goes, clear and intel- 
ligible ; and all I shall now require of him is to look at 
it from a new point of view, to approach it, as it were, 
from a different side, to study it with a new intention. 
Instead, then, of asking what are the beliefs which 
science inculcates, let us ask why, in the last resort, 
we hold them to be true. Instead of inquiring how 
a thing happens, or what it is, let us inquire how we 
know that it does thus happen, and why we believe 
that so in truth it is. Instead of enumerating causes, 
let us set ourselves to investigate reasons. 

Ill 
Now it is at once evident that the very same 
general body of doctrines, the very same set of prop- 
ositions about the ' natural ' world, arranged ac- 
cording to the principles suggested by these ques- 
tions, would fall into a wholly different order from 

[' See, however, infra, the chapter on ' Ultimate Scientific 
Ideas. '] 



104 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

that which would be observed if its distribution 
were governed merely by considerations based upon 
the convenience of scientific exposition. Indeed, 
we may say that there are at least four quite dif- 
ferent orders, theoretically distinguishable, though 
usually mixed up in practice, in which scientific 
truth may be expounded. There is, first, the order 
of discovery. This is governed by no rational prin- 
ciple, but depends on historic causes, on the acci- 
dents of individual genius and the romantic chances 
of experiment and observation. There is, secondly, 
the rhetorical order, useful enough in its proper 
place, in which, for example, we proceed from the 
simple to the difficult, or from the striking to the 
important, according to the needs of the hearer. 
There is, thirdly, the scientific order, in which, 
could we only bring it to perfection, we should pro- 
ceed from the abstract to the concrete, and from the 
general law to the particular instance, until the 
whole world of phenomena was gradually presented 
to our gaze as a closely woven tissue of causes and 
effects, infinite in its complexity, incessant in its 
changes, yet at each moment proclaiming to those 
who can hear and understand the certain prophecy 
of its future and the authentic record of its past. 
Lastly, there is what, according to the terminology 
here employed, must be called the philosophic or- 
der, in which the various scientific propositions or 
dogmas are, or rather should be, arranged as a 
series of premises and conclusions, starting from 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM IO5 

those which are axiomatic, i.e. for which proof can 
be neither given nor required, and moving on 
through a continuous series of binding inferences, 
until the whole of knowledge is caught up and 
ordered in the meshes of this all-inclusive dialectical 
network. 

In its perfected shape it is evident that the 
philosophic series, though it reaches out to the 
farthest confines of the known, must for each man 
trace its origin to something which he can regard as 
axiomatic and self-evident truth. There is no theo- 
retical escape for any of us from the ultimate * I.' 
What ' I ' believe as conclusive must be drawn, by 
some process which ' I ' accept as cogent, from 
something which ' I ' am obliged to regard as intrin- 
sically self-sufficient, beyond the reach of criticism 
or the need for proof. The philosophic order and 
the scientific order of statement, therefore, cannot 
fail to be wholly different. While the scientific or- 
der may start with the dogmatic enunciation of 
some great generalisation valid through the whole 
unmeasured range of the material universe, the philo- 
sophic order is perforce compelled to find its point of 
departure in the humble personality of the inquirer. 
His grounds of belief, not the things believed in, 
are the subject-matter of investigation. His reason, 
or, if you like to have it so, his share of the Univer- 
sal Reason, but in any case something which is his, 
must sit in judgment, and must try the cause. The 
rights of this tribunal are inalienable, its authority 



I06 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

incapable of delegation ; nor is there any superior 
court by which the verdict it pronounces can be 
reversed. 

If now the question were asked, ' On what sort 
of premises rests ultimately the scientific theory 
of the world ? ' science and empirical philosophy, 
though they might not agree on the meaning of 
terms, would agree in answering, ' On premises 
supplied by experience.* It is experience which has 
given us our first real knowledge of Nature and her 
laws. It is experience, in the shape of observation 
and experiment, which has given us the raw material 
out of which hypothesis and inference have slowly 
elaborated that richer conception of the material 
world which constitutes perhaps the chief, and cer- 
tainly the most characteristic, glory of the modern 
mind. 

What, then, is this experience ? or, rather, let us 
ask (so as to avoid the appearance of trenching on 
Kantian ground) what are these experiences ? Put- 
ting psychology on one side, these experiences, the 
experiences on which are alike founded the practice 
of the savage and the theories of the man of science, 
are for the most part observations of material things 
or objects, and of their behaviour in the presence of 
or in relation to each other. These, on the empirical 
theory of knowledge, supply the direct information, 
the immediate data from which all our wider knowl- 
edge ultimately draws its sanction. Behind these it is 
impossible to go ; impossible, but also unnecessary. 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM lO/ 

For as the ' evidence of the senses ' does not derive its 
authority from any higher source, so it is useless to 
dispute its full and indefeasible title to command our 
assent. According to this view, w^hich is thoroughly 
in accordance with common-sense, science rests in 
the main upon the immediate judgments we form 
about natural objects in the act of seeing, hearing, 
and handling them. This is the solid, if somewhat 
narrow, platform which provides us with a foothold 
whence we may reach upward into regions where 
the ^ senses ' convey to us no direct knowledge, 
where Ave have to do with laws remote from our 
personal observation, and with objects which can 
neither be seen, heard, nor handled. 



IV 



But although such a theory seems simple and 
straightforward enough, in perfect harmony with the 
habitual sentiments and the universal practice of 
mankind, it would evidently be rash to rest satisfied 
with it as a philosophy of science until we had at 
least heard what science itself has to say upon the 
subject. What, then, is the account which science 
gives of these ^ immediate judgments of the senses ' ? 
Has it anything to tell us about their nature, or the 
mode of their operation ? Without doubt it has ; 
and its teaching provides a curious, and at first 
sight an even startling, commentary on the com- 
mon-sense version of that philosophy of experience 



I08 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

whose general character has just been indicated 
above. 

For whereas common-sense tells us that our ex- 
perience of objects provides us with a knowledge of 
their nature which, so far as it goes, is immediate 
and direct, science informs us that each particular 
experience is itself but the final link in a long chain 
of causes and effects, whose beginning is lost amid 
the complexities of the material world, and whose 
ending is a change of some sort in the ' mind ' of 
the percipient. It informs us, further, that among 
these innumerable causes, the thing ' immediately 
experienced ' is but one ; and is, moreover, one 
separated from the ' immediate experience ' which it 
modestly assists in producing by a very large num- 
ber of intermediate causes which are never experi- 
enced at all. 

Take, for example, an ordinary case of vision. 
What are the causes which ultimately produce the 
apparently immediate experience of (for example) a 
green tree standing in the next field ? There are, 
first (to go no further back), the vibrations among 
the particles of the source of light, say the sun. 
Consequent on these are the ethereal undulations 
between the sun and the objects seen, namely, the 
green tree. Then follows the absorption of most of 
these undulations by the object ; the reflection of the 
' green ' residue ; the incidence of a small fraction of 
these on the lens of the eye ; their arrangement on 
the retina ; the stimulation of the optic nerve ; and, 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM IO9 

finally, the molecular change in a certain tract of the 
cerebral hemispheres by which, in some way or 
other wholly unknown, through predispositions in 
part acquired by the individual, but chiefly inherited 
through countless generations of ancestors, is pro- 
duced the complex mental fact which we describe by 
saying that ' we have an immediate experience of a 
tree about fifty yards off.' 

Now the experience, the causes and conditions of 
which I have thus rudely outlined, is typical of all 
the experiences, without exception, on which is based 
our knowledge of the material universe. Some of 
these experiences, no doubt, are incorrect. The 
' evidence of the senses,' as the phrase goes, proves 
now and then to be fallacious. But it is proved to 
be fallacious by other evidence of precisely the same 
kind ; and if we take the trouble to trace back far 
enough our reasons for believing any scientific truth 
whatever, they always end in some 'immediate 
experience ' or experiences of the type described 
above. 

But the comparison thus inevitably suggested be- 
tween ' immediate experiences ' considered as the 
ultimate basis of all scientific belief, and immediate 
experience considered as an insignificant and, so to 
speak, casual product of natural laws, suggests some 
curious reflections. I do not allude to the difficulty 
of understanding how a mental effect can be pro- 
duced by a physical cause — how matter can act on 
mind. The problem I wish to dwell on is of quite 



no THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

a different kind. It is concerned, not with the nat- 
ure of the laws by which the world is governed, but 
with their proof. It arises, not out of the difficulty 
of feeling our way slowly along the causal chain 
from physical antecedents to mental consequents, 
but from the difficulty of harmonising this move- 
ment with the opposite one, whereby we jump by 
some instantaneous effort of inferential activity from 
these mental consequents to an immediate conviction 
as to the reality and character of some of their re- 
moter physical antecedents. I am ' experiencing ' 
(to revert to our illustration) the tree in the next 
field. While looking at it I begin to reflect upon 
the double process I have just described. I remem- 
ber the long-drawn series of causes, physical and 
physiological, by which my perception of the object 
has been produced. I realise that each one of these 
causes might have been replaced by some other 
cause without altering the character of the conse- 
quent perception ; and that if it had been so re- 
placed, my judgment about the object, though it 
would have been as confident and as immediate as 
at present, would have been wrong. Anything, for 
instance, which would distribute similar green rays 
on the retina of my eyes in the same pattern as that 
produced by the tree, or anything which would pro- 
duce a like irritation of the optic nerve or a like 
modification of the cerebral tissues, would give me 
an experience in itself quite indistinguishable from 
my experience of the tree, though with the unfort- 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM III 

unate peculiarity of being wholly incorrect. The 
same message ^yould be delivered, in the same terms 
and on the same authority, but it would be false. 
And though we are quite familiar with the fact that 
illusions are possible and that mistakes will occur in 
the simplest observation, yet we can hardly avoid 
being struck by the incongruity of a scheme of be- 
lief whose premises are wholly derived from wit- 
nesses admittedly untrustworthy, yet which is un- 
able to supply any criterion, other than the evidence 
of these witnesses themselves, by which the char- 
acter of their evidence can in any given case be de- 
termined. 

The fact that even the most immediate experi- 
ences carry with them no inherent guarantee of their 
veracity is, however, by far the smallest of the diffi- 
culties which emerge from a comparison of the causal 
movement from object to perception, with the cogni- 
tive leap through perception to object. For a very 
slight consideration of the teaching of science as to 
the nature of the first is sufficient to prove, not merely 
the possible, but the habitual inaccuracy of the second. 
In other words, we need only consider carefully our 
perceptions regarded as psychological results, in 
order to see that, regarded as sources of information, 
they are not merely occasionally inaccurate, but ha- 
bitually mendacious. We are dealing, recollect, with 
a theory of science according to which the ultimate 
stress of scientific proof is thrown wholly upon our 
immediate experience of objects. But nine-tenths 



112 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

of our immediate experiences of objects are visual ; 
and all visual experiences, without exception, are, 
according to science, erroneous. As everybody 
knows, colour is not a property of the thing seen : 
it is a sensation produced in us by that thing. The 
thing itself consists of uncoloured particles, which 
become visible solely in consequence of their power 
of either producing or reflecting ethereal undula- 
tions. The degrees of brightness and the qualities 
of colour perceived in the thing, and in virtue of 
which alone any visual perception of the thing is 
possible, are, therefore, according to optics, no part 
of its reality, but are mere feelings produced in the 
mind of the percipient by the complex movements 
of material molecules, possessing mass and exten- 
sion, but to which it is not only incorrect but un- 
meaning to attribute either brightness or colour. 

From the side of science these are truisms. 
From the side of a theory or philosophy of science, 
however, they are paradoxes. It was sufficiently 
embarrassing to discover that the messages con- 
veyed to us by sensible experiences which the ob- 
server treats as so direct and so certain are, when 
considered in transit, at one moment nothing but 
vibrations of imperceptible particles, at another 
nothing but periodic changes in an unimaginable 
ether, at a third nothing but unknown, and perhaps 
unknowable, modifications of nervous tissue ; and 
that none of these various messengers carry with 
them any warrant that the judgment in which they 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM II3 

finally issue will prove to be true. But what are we 
to say about these same experiences when we dis- 
cover, not only that they may be wholly false, but 
that they are never wholly true? What sort of a 
system is that which makes haste to discredit its 
own premises ? In what entanglements of contra- 
diction do we not find ourselves involved by the 
attempt to rest science upon observations which 
science itself asserts to be erroneous? By what 
possible title do we proclaim the same immediate 
experience to be right when it testifies to the inde- 
pendent reality of something solid and extended, 
and to be wrong when it testifies to the indepen- 
dent reality of something illuminated and coloured? 



There is, of course, an answer to all this, simple 
enough if only it be true. The whole theory, it 
may be said, on which we have been proceeding is 
untenable, the undigested product of crude com- 
mon-sense. The bugbear which frightens us is of 
our own creation. We have no immediate expe- 
rience of independent things such as has been 
gratuitously supposed. What science tells us of the 
colour element in our visual perceptions, namely, 
that it is merely a feeling or sensation, is true of 
every element in every perception. We are di- 
rectly cognisant of nothing but mental states: all 
else is a matter of inference; a hypothetical ma- 



114 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

chinery devised for no other purpose than to ac- 
count for the existence of the only realities of which 
we have first-hand knowledge — namely, the mental 
states themselves. 

Now this theory does at first sight undoubtedly 
appear to harmonise with the general teaching of 
science on the subject of mental physiology. This 
teaching, as ordinarily expounded, assumes through- 
out a material world of objects and a psychical 
world of feelings and ideas. The latter is in all 
cases the product of the former. In some cases it 
may be a copy or partial reflection of the former. 
In no case is it identified with the former. When, 
therefore, I am in the act of experiencing a tree in 
the next field, what on this theory I am really doing 
is inferring from the fact of my having certain feel- 
ings the existence of a cause having qualities ade- 
quate to produce them. It is true that the process 
of inference is so rapid and habitual that we are un- 
conscious of performing it. It is also true that the 
inference is quite differently performed by the nat- 
ural man in his natural moments and the scientific 
man in his scientific moments. For, whereas the 
natural man infers the existence of a material object 
which in all respects resembles his idea of it, the 
scientific man knows very well that the material ob- 
ject only resembles his ideas of it in certain partic- 
ulars — extension, solidity, and so forth — and that 
in respect of such attributes as colour and illumi- 
nation there is no resemblance at all. Nevertheless, 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM II5 

in all cases, whether there be resemblance between 
them or not, the material fact is a conclusion from 
the mental fact, with which last alone we can be 
said to be, so to speak, in any immediate empirical 
relation. 

As this theory regarding the sources of our 
knowledge of the material world fits in with the 
habitual language of mental physiology, so also it 
fits in with the first instincts of speculative analysis. 
It is, I suppose, one of the earliest discoveries of the 
metaphysically minded youth that he can, if he so 
wills it, change his point of view, and thereby sud^ 
denly convert what in ordinary moments seem the 
solid realities of this material universe, into an un- 
ending pageant of feelings and ideas, moving in 
long procession across his mental stage, and having 
from the nature of the case no independent being 
before they appear, nor retaining any after they 
vanish. 

But however plausible be this correction of com- 
mon-sense, it has its difficulties. In the first place, 
it involves a complete divorce between the practice 
of science and its theory. It is all very well to say 
that the scientific account of mental physiology in 
general, and of sense-perception in particular, re- 
quires us to hold that what is immediately expe- 
rienced are mental facts, and that our knowledge of 
physical facts is but mediate and inferential. Such 
a conclusion is quite out of harmony with its own 
premises, since the propositions on which, as a 



Il6 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

matter of historical verity, science is ultimately 
founded are not propositions about states of mind, 
but about material things. The observations on 
which are built, for example, our knowledge of anat- 
omy or our knowledge of chemistry were not, in 
the opinion of those who originally made them or 
have since confirmed them, observations of their 
own feelings, but of objects thought of as wholly 
independent of the observer. They may have been 
mistaken. Such observations may be impossible. 
But, possible or impossible, they were believed to 
have occurred, and on that belief depends the 
whole empirical evidence of science as scientific 
discoverers themselves conceive it. 

The reader will, I hope, understand that I am 
not here arguing that the theory of experience now 
under consideration, the theory, that is, which con- 
fines the field of immediate experience to our own 
states of mind, is inconsistent with science, or even 
that it supplies an inadequate empirical basis for 
science. On these points I may have a word to 
say presently. My present contention simply is, 
that it is not experience thus understood which 
has supplied men of science with their knowl- 
edge of the physical universe. They have never 
suspected that, while they supposed themselves 
to be perceiving independent material objects, 
they were in reality perceiving quite another 
set of things, namely, feelings and sensations of 
a particular kind, grouped in particular ways, 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM II 7 

and succeeding each other in a particular order. 
Nor, if this idea had ever occurred to them, would 
they have admitted that these two classes of things 
could by any merely verbal manipulation be made 
the same. So that if this particular account of the 
nature of experience be accurate, the system of 
thought represented by science presents the singu- 
lar spectacle of a creed which is believed in practice 
for one set of reasons, though in theory it can only 
be justified by another; and which, through some 
beneficent accident, turns out to be true, though 
its origin and each subsequent stage in its gradual 
development are the product of error and illusion. 

This is perplexing enough. Yet an even stronger 
statement would seem to be justified. We must not 
only say that the experiences on which science is 
founded have been invariably misinterpreted by those 
who underwent them, but that, if they had not been 
so misinterpreted, science as we know it would 
never have existed. We have not merely stumbled 
on the truth in spite of error and illusion, which is 
odd, but because of error and illusion, which is odd- 
er. For if the scientific observers of Nature had 
realised from the beginning that all they were observ- 
ing was their own feelings and ideas, as empirical 
idealism and mental physiology alike require us to 
hold, they surely would never have taken the trouble 
to invent a Nature {i.e. an independently existing 
system of material things) for no other purpose than 
to provide a machinery by which the occurrence of 



Il8 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

feelings and ideas might be adequately accounted 
for. To go through so much to get so little, to 
bewilder themselves in the ever-increasing intricacies 
of this hypothetical wheel -work, to pile world on 
world and add infinity to infinity, and all for no more 
important object than to find an explanation for a 
few fleeting impressions, say of colour or resistance, 
would, indeed, have seemed to them a most super- 
fluous labour. Nor is it possible to doubt that this 
task has been undertaken and partially accomplished 
only because humanity has been, as for the most part 
it still is, under the belief not merely that there ex- 
ists a universe possessing the independence which 
science and common-sense alike postulate, but that 
it is a universe immediately, if imperfectly, revealed 
to us in the deliverances of sense-perception. 



VI 



We can scarcely deny, then, though the paradox 
be hard of digestion, that, historically speaking, if 
the theory we are discussing be true, science owes 
its being to an erroneous view as to what kind of 
information it is that our experiences directly convey 
to us. But a much more important question than 
the merely historical one remains behind, namely, 
whether, from the kind of information which our ex- 
periences do thus directly convey to us, anything at 
all resembling the scientific theory of Nature can be 
reasonably extracted. Can our revised conception 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM II9 

of the material world really be inferred from our 
revised conception of the import and limits of ex- 
perience? Can we by any possible treatment of 
sensations and feelings legitimately squeeze out of 
them trustworthy knowledge of the permanent and 
independent material universe of which, according 
to science, sensations and feelings are but transient 
and evanescent effects ? 

I cannot imagine the process by which such a 
result may be attained, nor has it been satisfactorily 
explained to us by any apologist of the empirical 
theory of knowledge. We may, no doubt, argue 
that sensations and feelings, like everything else, 
must have a cause ; that the hypothesis of a material 
world suggests such a cause in a form which is 
agreeable to our natural beliefs ; and that it is a 
hypothesis we are justified in adopting when we find 
that it enables us to anticipate the order and char- 
acter of that stream of perceptions which it is called 
into existence to explain. But this is a line of argu- 
ment which really will not bear examination. Every 
one of the three propositions of which it consists is, 
if we are to go back to fundamental principles, either 
disputable or erroneous. The principle of causation 
cannot be extracted out of a succession of individual 
experiences, as is implied by the first. The world 
described by science is not congruous with our 
natural beliefs, as is alleged by the second. Nor can 
we legitimately reason back from effect to cause in 
the manner required by the third. 



I20 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

A very brief comment will, 1 think, be sufficient 
to make this clear, and I proceed to offer it on each of 
the three propositions, taking them, for convenience, 
in the reverse order, and beginning, therefore, with 
the third. This in effect declares that as the material 
world described by science would, if it existed, pro- 
duce sensations and impressions in the very manner 
in which our experiences assure us that they actual- 
ly occur, we may assume that such a world exists. 
But may we ? Even supposing that there was this 
complete correspondence between theory and fact, 
which is far, unfortunately, from being at present 
the case, are we justified in making so bold a logical 
leap from the known to the unknown ? I doubt it. 
Recollect that by hypothesis we are strictly im- 
prisoned, so far as direct experiences are concerned, 
within the circle of sensations or impressions. It is 
in this self-centred universe alone, therefore, that 
we can collect the premises of further knowledge. 
How can it possibly supply us with any principles 
of selection by which to decide between the various 
kinds of cause that may, for anything we know to 
the contrary, have had a hand in its production? 
None of these kinds of cause are open to observa- 
tion. All must, from the nature of the case, be 
purely conjectural. Because, therefore, we happen 
to have thought of one which, with a little goodwill, 
can be forced into a rude correspondence with the 
observed facts, shall we, oblivious of the million 
possible explanations which a superior intelligence 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 121 

might be able to devise, proceed to decorate our 
particular fancy with the title of the ' Real World ' ? 
If we do so, it is not, as the candid reader will be 
prepared to admit, because such a conclusion is 
justified by such premises, but because we are pre- 
disposed to a conclusion of this kind by those 
instinctive beliefs which, in unreflective moments, 
the philosopher shares with the savage. In such 
moments all men conceive themselves (by hypoth- 
esis erroneously) as having direct experiences of 
an independent material universe. When, therefore, 
science, or philosophers on behalf of science, pro- 
ceed to infer such a universe from impressions of 
extension, resistance, and so forth, they find them- 
selves, so far, in an unnatural and quite illegitimate 
alliance with common-sense. By procedures which 
are different, and essentially inconsistent, the two 
parties have found it possible to reach results which 
at first sight look very much the same. Immediate 
intuitions wrongly interpreted come to the aid of 
mediate inferences illegitimately constructed ; we 
find ourselves quite prepared to accept the conclu- 
sions of bad reasoning, because they have a partial 
though, as I shall now proceed to show, an illusory 
resemblance to the deliverances of uncriticised ex- 
perience. 

This, it will be observed, is the subject dealt 
with in the second of the three propositions on 
which I am engaged in commenting. It alleges that 
the world described by science is congruous with 



122 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS 0^ NATURALISM 

our natural beliefs ; a thesis not very important in 
itself, which I only dwell on now because it affords 
a convenient text from which to preach the great 
oddity of the creed which science requires us to 
adopt respecting the world in which we live. This 
creed is evidently in its origin an amendment or 
modification of our natural or instinctive view of 
things, a compromise to which we are no doubt 
compelled by considerations of conclusive force, but 
a compromise, nevertheless, which, if we did not 
know it to be true, we should certainly find it diffi- 
cult not to abandon as absurd. 

For, consider what kind of a world it is in which 
we are asked to believe — a world which, so far as 
most people are concerned, can only be at all 
adequately conceived in terms of the visual sense, 
but which in its true reality possesses neither of the 
qualities characteristically associated with the visual 
sense, namely, illumination and colour. A world 
which is half like our ideas of it and half unlike 
them. Like our ideas of it, that is to say, so far as 
the so-called primary qualities of matter, such as 
extension and solidity, are concerned ; unlike our 
ideas of it so far as the so-called secondary qualities, 
such as warmth and colour, are concerned. A 
hybrid world, a world of inconsistencies and strange 
anomalies. A world one-half of which may com- 
mend itself to the empirical philosopher, and the 
other half of which may commend itself to the plain 
man, but which as a whole can commend itself to 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 1 23 

neither. A world which is rejected by the first be- 
cause it arbitrarily selects what he regards as modes 
of sensation, and hypostatises them into permanent 
realities ; while it is scarcely intelligible to the 
second, because it takes what he regards as perma- 
nent realities, and evaporates them into modes of 
sensation. A world, in short, which seems to 
harmonise neither with the conclusions of critical 
empiricism nor with the ' unmistakable evidence of 
the senses ' ; which outrages the whole psychology 
of the one, and is in direct contradiction with the 
deliverances of the other. 

So far as the leading philosophic empiricists are 
concerned — and it is only with them that we need 
deal — the result of these difficulties has been extra- 
ordinary. They have found it impossible to swal- 
low this strange universe, consisting partly of 
microcosms furnished with impressions and ideas 
which, as such, are of course transient and essenti- 
ally mental, partly of a macrocosm furnished with 
material objects whose qualities exactly resemble 
impressions and ideas, with the embarrassing ex- 
ception that they are neither transient nor mental. 
They have, therefore, been compelled by one device 
or another to sweep the macrocosm as conceived by 
science altogether out of existence. In the name of 
experience itself they have destroyed that which 
professes to be experience systematised. And we 
are presented with the singular spectacle of thinkers 
whose claim to our consideration largely consists in 



124 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

their uncompromising empiricism playing uncon- 
scious havoc with the most solid results which em- 
pirical methods have hitherto attained. 

I say 'unconscious' havoc, because, no doubt, the 
truth of this indictment would not be admitted by 
the majority of those against whom it is directed. 
Yet there can, I think, be no real question as to its 
truth. In the case of Hume it will hardly be 
denied ; and Hume, perhaps, would himself have 
been the last to deny it. But in the case of John 
Mill, of Mr. Herbert Spencer,^ and of Professor 
Huxley, it is an allegation which would certainly be 
repudiated, though the evidence for it seems to me 
to lie upon the surface of their speculations. The 
allegation, be it observed, is this — that while each 
of these thinkers has recognised the necessity for 
some independent reality in relation to the ever- 
moving stream of sensations which constitute our 
immediate experiences, each of them has rejected 
the independent reality which is postulated and ex- 
plained by science, and each of them has substituted 
for it a private reality of his own. Where the 
physicist, for example, assumes actual atoms and 
motions and forces. Mill saw nothing but permanent 
possibilities of sensation, and Mr. Spencer knows 

^ It is probably accurate to describe Mr. Spencer as an empiri- 
cist ; though he has added to the accustomed first principles of em- 
piricism certain doctrines of his own which, while they do not 
strengthen his system, make it somewhat difficult to classify. The 
reader interested in such matters will find most of the relevant 
points discussed in Philosophic Doubt, chaps, viii., ix., x. 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 125 

nothing but ' the unknowable.' Without discussing 
the place which such entities may properly occupy 
in the general scheme of things, I content myself 
with observing, what I have elsewhere endeavoured 
to demonstrate at length, that they cannot occupy 
the place now filled by material Nature as conceived 
by science. That which is a ' permanent possibil- 
ity,' but is nothing more, is permanent only in name. 
It represents no enduring reality, nothing which 
persists, nothing which has any being save during 
the brief intervals when, ceasing to be a mere 
'possibility,' it blossoms into the actuality of sen- 
sation. Before sentient beings were, it was not. 
When they cease to exist, it will vanish away. If 
they change the character of their sensibility, it will 
sympathetically vary its nature. How unfit is this 
unsubstantial shadow of a phrase to take the place 
now occupied by that material universe, of which 
we are but fleeting accidents, whose attributes are 
for the most part absolutely independent of us, 
whose duration is incalculable ! 

A different but not a less conclusive criticism 
may be passed on Mr. Spencer's 'unknowable.' For 
anything I am here prepared to allege to the con- 
trary, this may be real enough ; but, unfortunately, 
it has not the kind of reality imperatively required 
by science. It is not in space. It is not in time. 
It possesses neither mass nor extension ; nor is it 
capable of motion. Its very name implies that it 
eludes the grasp of thought, and cannot be caught 



126 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

up into formulae. Whatever purpose, therefore, 
such an * object ' may subserve in the universe of 
things, it is as useless as a ' permanent possibility * 
itself to provide subject-matter for scientific treat- 
ment. If these be all that truly exist outside the 
circle of impressions and ideas, then is all science 
turned to foolishness, and evolution stands confessed 
as a mere figment of the imagination. Man, or 
rather * I,' become not merely the centre of the 
world, but am the world. Beyond me and my ideas 
there is either nothing, or nothing that can be known. 
The problems about which we disquiet ourselves in 
vain, the origin of things and the modes of their de- 
velopment, the inner constitution of matter and its 
relations to mind, are questionings about nothing, 
interrogatories shouted into the void. The baseless 
fabric of the sciences, like the great globe itself, dis- 
solves at the touch of theories like these, leaving not 
a wrack behind. Nor does there seem to be any 
other course open to the consistent agnostic, were 
such a being possible, than to contemplate in patience 
the long procession of his sensations, without disturb- 
ing himself with futile inquiries into what, if any- 
thing, may lie beyond. 

VII 

There remains but one problem further with 
which I need trouble the readers of this chapter. It 
is that raised by the only remaining proposition of 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 12/ 

the three with which I promised just now to deal. 
This asserts, it may be recollected, that the principle 
of causation and, by parity of reasoning, any other 
universal principle of sense-interpretation, may by 
some process of logical alchemy be extracted, not 
merely from experience in general,^ but even from 
the experience of a single individual. 

But who, it may be asked, is unreasonable enough 
to demand that it should be extracted from the ex- 
perience of a single individual? What is there in 
the empirical theory which requires us to impose so 
arbitrary a limitation upon the sources of our knowl- 
edge ? Have we not behind us the whole experience 
of the race ? Is it to count for nothing that for num- 
berless generations mankind has been scrutinising 
the face of Nature, and storing up for our guidance 
innumerable observations of the laws which she 
obeys ? Yes, I reply, it is to count for nothing ; and 
for a most simple reason. In making this appeal to 
the testimony of mankind with regard to the world 
in which they live, we take for granted that there is 
such a world, that mankind has had experiences of 
it, and that, so far as is necessary for our purpose, 
we know what those experiences have been. But 
by what right do we take those things for granted ? 
They are not axiomatic or intuitive truths ; they 
must be proved by something ; and that something 
must, on the empirical theory, be in the last resort 
experience, and experience alone. But whose ex- 

* See Philosophic Doubt, ch. i. 



128 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

perience ? Plainly it cannot be general experience, 
for that is the very thing whose reality has to be es- 
tablished, and whose character is in question. It 
must, therefore, in every case and for each individual 
man be his own personal experience. This, and only 
this, can supply him with evidence for those funda- 
mental beliefs, without whose guidance it is impos- 
sible for him either to reconstruct the past or to an- 
ticipate the future. 

Consider, for example, the law of causation ; one, 
but by no means the only one, of those general prin- 
ciples of interpretation which, as I am contending, 
are presupposed in any appeal to general experience, 
and cannot, therefore, be proved by it. If we en- 
deavour to analyse the reasoning by which we ar- 
rive at the conviction that any particular event or 
any number of particular events have occurred out- 
side the narrow ring of our own immediate percep- 
tions, we shall find that not a step of this process 
can we take without assuming that the course of 
Nature is uniform ^ ; or, if not absolutely uniform, at 
least sufficiently uniform to allow us to argue with 
tolerable security from effects to causes, or, if need 
be, from causes to effects, over great intervals of 
time and space. The whole of what is called his- 
torical evidence is, in its most essential parts, noth- 

^ The reader will find some observations on the meaning of the 
phrase, ' Uniformity of Nature,' on p. 289 et seq. In this chapter 
I have assumed (following empirical usage) that the Uniformity of 
Nature and the Law of Causation are different expressions for the 
same thing. 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM I29 

ing more than an argument or series of arguments 
of this kind. The fact that mankind have given 
their testimony to the general uniformity of Nature, 
or, indeed, to anything else, can be established by 
the aid of that principle itself, and by it alone ; so 
that if we abandon it, we are in a moment deprived 
of all logical access to the outer world, of all cogni- 
sance of other minds, of all usufruct of their accu- 
mulated knowledge, of all share in the intellectual 
heritage of the race. While if we cling to it (as, to 
be sure, we must, whether we like it or not), we can 
do so only on condition that we forego every en- 
deavour to prove it by the aid of general experience; 
for such a procedure would be nothing less than to 
compel what is intended to be the conclusion of our 
argument to figure also among the most important 
of its premises. 

The problem, therefore, is reduced to this : Can 
we find in our personal experience adequate evi- 
dence of a law which, like the law of Causation, 
does, by the very terms in which it is stated, claim 
universal jurisdiction, as of right, to the utmost 
verge both of time and space. And surely, to enun- 
ciate such a question is to suggest the inevitable 
answer. The sequences familiar to us in the petty 
round of daily life, the accustomed recurrence of 
something resembling a former consequent, follow- 
ing on the heels of something resembling a former 
antecedent, are sufficient to generate the expecta- 
tions and the habits by which we endeavour, with 
9 



130 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

what success we may, to accommodate our behav- 
iour to the unyielding requirements of the world 
around us. But to throw upon experiences such as 
these ^ the whole burden of fixing our opinions as to 
the constitution of the universe is quite absurd. It 
would be absurd in any case. It would be absurd 
even if all the phenomena of which we have imme- 
diate knowledge succeeded each other according to 
some obvious and undeviating order ; for the con- 
trast between this microscopic range of observation 
and the gigantic induction which it is sought to rest 
thereon, would rob the argument of all plausibility. 
But it is doubly and trebly absurd when we reflect 
on what our experiences really are. So far are they 
from indicating, when taken strictly by themselves, 
the existence of a world where all things small and 
great follow with the most exquisite regularity and 
the most minute obedience the bidding of unchang- 
ing law, that they indicate precisely the reverse. In 
certain regions of experience, no doubt, orderly se- 
quence appears to be the rule : day alternates with 
night, and summer follows upon spring ; the sun 
moves through the zodiac, and unsupported bodies 
fall usually, though, to be sure, not always, to the 
ground. Even of such elementary astronomical and 
physical facts, however, it could hardly be main- 
tained that any man would have a right, on the 
strength of his personal observation alone, confident- 

^ At least in the absence of any transcendental interpretation of 
them. See next chapter. 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 131 

\y to assert their undeviating regularity. But when 
we come to the more complex phenomena with 
which we have to deal, the plain lesson taught by 
personal observation is not the regularity, but the 
irregularity, of Nature. A kind of ineffectual at- 
tempt at uniformity, no doubt, is commonly appar- 
ent, as of an ill-constructed machine that will run 
smoothly for a time, and then for no apparent reason 
begin to jerk and quiver ; or of a drunken man who, 
though he succeeds in keeping to the high-road, yet 
pursues along it a most wavering and devious course. 
But of that perfect adjustment, that all-penetrating 
governance by law, which lies at the root of scientific 
inference we find not a trace. In many cases sensa- 
tion follows sensation, and event hurries after event, 
to all appearances absolutely at random : no ob- 
served order of succession is ever repeated, nor is it 
pretended that there is any direct causal connection 
between the members of the series as they appear 
one after the other in the consciousness of the indi- 
vidual. But even when these conditions are reversed, 
perfect uniformity is never observed. The most 
careful series of experiments carried out by the most 
accomplished investigators never show identical re- 
sults ; and as for the general mass of mankind, so far 
are they from finding, either in their personal experi- 
ences or elsewhere, any sufficient reason for accept- 
ing in its perfected form the principle of Universal 
Causation, that, as a matter of fact, this doctrine has 
been steadily ignored by them up to the present hour. 



132 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

This apparent irregularity of Nature, obvious 
enough when we turn our attention to it, escapes 
our habitual notice, of course, because we invariably 
attribute the want of observed uniformity to the 
errors of the observer. And without doubt we do 
well. But what does this imply ? It implies that we 
bring to the interpretation of our sense-perception 
the principle of causation ready made. It implies 
that we do not believe the world to be governed by 
immutable law because our experiences appear to 
be regular ; but that we believe that our experi- 
ences, in spite of their apparent irregularity, follow 
some (perhaps) unknown rule because we first be- 
lieve the world to be governed by immutable law. 
But this is as much as to say that the principle is 
not proved by experience, but that experience is un- 
derstood in the light of the principle. Here, again, 
empiricism fails us. As in the case of our judgments 
about particular matters of fact, so also in the case 
of these other judgments, whose scope is co-exten- 
sive with the whole realm of Nature, we find that 
any endeavour to formulate a rational justification 
for them based on experience alone breaks down, 
and, to all appearance, breaks down hopelessly. 

VIII 

But even if this reasoning be sound, may the 
reader exclaim, What is it that we gain by it ? What 
harvest are we likely to reap from such broadcast 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 1 33 

sowing of scepticism as this? What does it profit 
us to show that a great many truths which every- 
body believes, and which no abstract speculations 
will induce us to doubt, are still waiting for a philo- 
sophic proof ? Fair questions, it must be admitted ; 
questions, nevertheless, to which I must reserve my 
full answer until a later stage of our inquiry. Yet 
even now something may be said, by way of conclu- 
sion to this chapter, on the relation which these crit- 
icisms bear to the scheme of thought whose practi- 
cal consequences we traced out in the first part of 
these Notes. 

I begin by admitting that the criticisms them- 
selves are, from the nature of the case, incomplete. 
They contain but the concise and even meagre out- 
line of an argument which is itself but a portion 
only of the whole case. For want of space, or to 
avoid unsuitable technicalities, much has been omitted 
which would have been relevant to the issues raised, 
and have still further strengthened the position 
which has been taken up. Yet, though more might 
have been said, what has been said is, in my opinion, 
sufficient ; and I shall, therefore, not scruple hence- 
forth to assume that a purely empirical theory of 
things, a philosophy which depends for its premises 
in the last resort upon the particulars revealed to 
us in perceptive experience alone, is one that can- 
not rationally be accepted. 

Is this conclusion, then, adverse to Naturalism ? 
And, if so, must it not tell with equal force against 



134 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

Science, seeing that it is solely against that part of 
the naturalistic teaching which is taken over bodily 
from Science that it appears to be directed ? Of 
these two questions, I answer the first in the affirm- 
ative, the second in the negative. Doubtless, if 
empiricism be shattered, it must drag down natural- 
ism in its fall; for, after all, naturalism is nothing 
more than the assertion that empirical methods are 
valid, and that no others are so. But because any 
effectual criticism of empiricism is the destruction 
of naturalism, is it therefore the destruction of sci- 
ence also ? Surely not. The adherent of natural- 
ism is an empiricist from necessity ; the man of 
science, if he be an empiricist, is so only from 
choice. The latter may, if he please, have no philos- 
ophy at all, or he may have a different one. He is 
not obliged, any more than other men, to justify his 
conclusions by an appeal to first principles ; still less 
is he obliged to take his first principles from so poor 
a creed as the one we have been discussing. Science 
preceded the theory of science, and is independent 
of it. Science preceded naturalism, and will sur- 
vive it. Though the convictions involved in our 
practical conception of the universe are not beyond 
the reach of theoretic doubts, though we habitually 
stake our all upon assumptions which we never at- 
tempt to justify, and which we could not justify it 
we would, yet is our scientific certitude unshaken ; 
and if we still strive after some solution of our 
sceptical difficulties, it is because this is necessary 



i 



THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 1 35 

for the satisfaction of an intellectual ideal, not be- 
cause it is required to fortify our confidence either 
in the familiar teachings of experience or in their 
utmost scientific expansion. And hence arises my 
principal complaint against naturalism. With Em- 
pirical philosophy, considered as a tentative con- 
tribution to the theory of science, I have no desire 
to pick a quarrel. That it should fail is nothing. 
Other philosophies have failed. Such is, after all, 
the common lot. That it should have been con- 
trived to justify conclusions already accepted is, if a 
fault at all — which I doubt — at least a most venial 
one, and one, moreover, which it has committed in 
the best of philosophic company. That it should 
derive some moderate degree of imputed credit 
from the universal acceptance of the scientific be- 
liefs which it countersigns, may be borne with, 
though for the real interests of speculative inquiry 
this has been, I think, a misfortune. But that it 
should develop into naturalism, and then, on the 
strength of labours which it has not endured, of 
victories which it has not won, and of scientific 
triumphs in which it has no right to share, presume, 
in despite of its speculative insufficiency, to dictate 
terms of surrender to every other system of belief, is 
altogether intolerable. Who would pay the slight- 
est attention to naturalism if it did not force itself 
into the retinue of science, assume her livery, and 
claim, as a kind of poor relation, in some sort to rep* 
resent her authority and to speak with her voice ? 



136 THE PHILOSOPHIC BASIS OF NATURALISM 

Of itself it is nothing. It neither ministers to the 
needs of mankind, nor does it satisfy their reason. 
And if, in spite of this, its influence has increased, is 
increasing, and as yet shows no signs of diminution ; 
if more and more the educated and the half-educated 
are acquiescing in its pretensions and, however re- 
luctantly, submitting to its domination, this is, at 
least in part, because they have not learned to dis- 
tinguish between the practical and inevitable claims 
which experience has on their allegiance, and the 
speculative but quite illusory title by which the em- 
pirical school have endeavoured to associate natural- 
ism and science in a kind of joint supremacy over 
the thoughts and consciences of mankind. 



CHAPTER II 

IDEALISM ; AFTER SOME RECENT ENGLISH WRITINGS * 



The difficulties in the way of an empirical philos- 
ophy of science, with which we dealt in the last 

^ The reader who has no familiarity with philosophic literature is 
advised to omit this chapter. The philosophic reader will, I hope, 
regard it as provisional. Transcendental Idealism is, if I mistake 
not, at this moment in rather a singular position in this country. 
In the land of its birth (as I am informed) it is but little considered. 
In English-speaking countries it is, within the narrow circle of 
professed philosophers, perhaps the dominant mood of thought; 
while without that circle it is not so much objected to as totally 
ignored. This anomalous state of things is no doubt due in part 
to the inherent difficulty of the subject ; but even more, I think, to 
the fact that the energy of English Idealists has been consumed 
rather in the production of commentaries on other people's systems 
than in expositions of their own. The result of this is that we do 
not quite know where we are, that we are more or less in a con- 
dition of expectancy, and that both learners and critics are placed 
at a disadvantage. Pending the appearance of some original work 
which shall represent the constructive views of the younger school 
of thinkers, I have written the following chapter, with reference 
chiefly to the writings of the late Mr. T. H. Green, which at pres- 
ent contain the most important exposition, so far as I know, of this 
phase of English thought. Mr. Bradley's noteworthy work, Ap- 
pearance and Reality, published some time after this chapter was 
finished, is written with characteristic independence ; but I know 
not whether it has yet commanded any large measure of assent 
from the few who are competent to pronounce a verdict upon its 
merits. 



138 IDEALISM 

chapter, largely arise from the conflict which exists 
between two parts of a system, the scientific half of 
which requires us to regard experience as an effect 
of an external and independent world, while the 
philosophic or epistemological half offers this same 
experience to us as the sole groundwork and logi- 
cal foundation on which any knowledge whatever 
of an external and independent world may be ra- 
tionally based. These difficulties and the arguments 
founded on them require to be urged, in the first in- 
stance, in opposition to those who explicitly hold 
what I have called the * naturalistic ' creed ; and 
then to that general body of educated opinion 
which, though reluctant to contract its beliefs with- 
in the narrow circuit of ' naturalism,* yet habitually 
assumes that there is presented to us in science a 
body of opinion, certified by reason, solid, certain, 
and impregnable, to which theology adds, as an edi- 
fying supplement, a certain number of dogmas, of 
which the well-disposed assimilate as many, but 
only as many, as their superior allegiance to * posi- 
tive ' knowledge will permit them to digest. 

These two classes, however, by no means exhaust 
the kinds of opinion with which it is necessary to 
deal. And in particular there is a metaphysical 
school, few indeed in numbers, but none the less im- 
portant in matters speculative, whose general posi- 
tion is wholly distinct and independent; who would, 
indeed, not perhaps very widely, dissent from the 
negative conclusions already reached, but who have 



IDEALISM 139 

their own positive solution of the problem of the 
universe. In their opinion, all the embarrassments 
which may be shown to attend on the empirical 
philosophy are due to the fact that empirical philos- 
ophers wholly misunderstand the essential nature 
of that experience on which they profess to found 
their beliefs. The theory of perception evolved out 
of Locke, by Berkeley and Hume, which may be 
traced without radical modification through their 
modern successors, is, according to the school of 
which I speak, at the root of all the mischief. Of 
this theory they make short w^ork. They press to 
the utmost the sceptical consequences to which it 
inevitably leads. They show, or profess to show, 
that it renders not only scientific knowledge, but 
any knowledge whatever, impossible ; and they of- 
fer as a substitute a theory of experience, very re- 
mote indeed from ordinary modes of expression, by 
which these consequences may, in their judgment, 
be entirely avoided. 

The dimensions and character of these Notes ren- 
der it impossible, even were I adequately equipped 
for the task, to deal fully with so formidable a sub- 
ject as Transcendental Idealism, either in its 
historical or in its metaphysical aspect. Remote 
though it be from ordinary modes of thought, some 
brief discussion of the theory with which, in some 
recent English works, it supplies us concerning Nat- 
ure and God is, however, absolutely necessary ; 
and I therefore here present the following observa- 



140 IDEALISM 

tions to the philosophic reader with apologies for 
their brevity, and to the unphilosophic reader with 
apologies for their length. 

From what I have already said it is clear that 
the theory to which Transcendental Idealism may 
be, from our point of view, considered as a reply, is 
not the theory of experience which is taken for 
granted in ordinary scientific statement, but the 
closely allied ' psychological theory of perception * 
evolved by thinkers usually classed rather as philos- 
ophers than as men of science. The difference is 
not wholly immaterial, as will appear in the sequel. 

What, then, is this * psychological theory of per- 
ception ' ? Or, rather, where is the weak point in it 
at which it is open to attack by the transcendental 
idealists ? It lies in the account given by that the- 
ory of the real. According to this account the 
' real ' in external experience, that which, because it 
is not due to any mental manipulation by the per- 
cipient, such as abstraction or comparison, may be 
considered as the experienced fact, is, in ultimate 
analysis, either a sensation or a group of sensations. 
These sensations and groups of sensations are sub- 
jected in the mind to a process of analysis and com- 
parison. Discrimination is made between those 
which are unlike. Those which have points of re- 
semblance are called by a common name. The se- 
quences and CO -existences which obtain among 
them are noted ; the laws by which they are bound 
together are discovered ; and the order in which 



IDEALISM 141 

they may be expected to recur is foreseen and un- 
derstood. 

Now, say the idealists, if everything of which ex- 
ternal reality can be predicated is thus either a sen- 
sation or a group of sensations, if these and these only 
are ' given ' in external appearance, everything else, in 
eluding relations, being mere fictions of the mind, 
we are reduced to the absurd position of holding 
that the real is not only unknown, but is also un- 
knowable. For a brief examination of the nature of 
experience is sufficient to prove that an unrelated 
* thing ' (be that ' thing ' a sensatian or a group of 
sensations), which is not qualified by its resemblance 
to other things, its difference from other things, and 
its connection with other things, is really, so far as 
we are concerned, no ' thing ' at all. It is not an 
object of possible experience ; its true character 
must be for ever hid from us ; or, rather, as char- 
acter consists simply in relations, it kas no char- 
acter, nor can it form part of that intelligible 
world with which alone we have to deal. 

Ideas of relation are, therefore, required to con- 
vert the supposed ' real ' of external experience into 
something of which experience can take note. But 
such ideas themselves are unintelligible, except as the 
results of the intellectual activity of some * Self ' or 
^ I '. They must be somebody's thought, somebody's 
ideas ; if only for the purpose of mutual compari- 
son, there must be some bond of union between 
them other than themselves. Here again, therefore, 



142 IDEALISM 

the psychological analysis of experience breaks 
down, and it becomes plain that just as the real in 
external experience is real only in virtue of an in- 
tellectual element, namely, ideas of relation (cate- 
gories), through which it was apprehended, so in 
internal experience ideas and sensations presuppose 
the existence of an ' I,' or self-conscious unity, which 
is neither sensation nor idea, which ought not, 
therefore, on the psychological theory to be con- 
sidered as having any claim to reality at all, but 
which, nevertheless, is presupposed in the very pos- 
sibility of phenomena appearing as elements in a 
single experience. 

We are thus apparently left by the idealist theory 
face to face with a mind (thinking subject) which is 
the source of relations (categories), and a world which 
is constituted by relations : with a mind which is 
conscious of itself, and a world of which that mind 
may without metaphor be described as the creator. 
We have, in short, reached the central position of 
transcendental idealism. But before we proceed to 
subject the system to any critical observations, let 
us ask what it is we are supposed to gain by endeav- 
ouring thus to rethink the universe from so unaccus- 
tomed a point of view. 

In the first place, then, it is claimed for this theory 
that it frees us from the scepticism which, in matters 
scientific as well as in matters theological, follows 
inevitably upon the psychological doctrine of percep- 
tion as just explained : a scepticism which not only 



IDEALISM 143 

leaves no room for God and the soul, but destroys 
the very possibility of framing any general proposi- 
tion about the ' external * world, by destroying the 
possibility of there being any world, ' external * or 
otherwise, in which permanent relation shall exist. 

In the second place, it makes Reason no mere 
accidental excrescence on a universe of material 
objects ; an element to be added to, or subtracted 
from, the sum of ' things ' as the blind shock of un- 
thinking causes may decide. Rather does it make 
Reason the very essence of all that is or can be : the 
(immanent) cause of the world - process ; its origin 
and its goal. 

In the third place, it professes to establish on a 
firm foundation the moral freedom of self-conscious 
agents. That ' Self ' which is the prior condition of 
there being a natural world cannot be the creature 
of that world. It stands above and beyond the sphere 
of causes and effects ; it is no mere object among 
other objects, driven along its predestined course by 
external forces in obedience to alien laws. On the 
contrary, it is a free, autonomous Spirit, not only 
bound, but able, to fulfil the moral commands which 
are but the expression of its own most essential being. 



II 

I am reluctant to suggest objections to any theory 
which promises results so admirable. Yet I cannot 
think that all the difficulties with which it is sur- 



144 IDEALISM 

rounded have been fairly faced, or, at any rate, fully 
explained, by those who accept its main principles. 
Consider, for example, the crucial question of the 
analysis which reduces all experience to an experience 
of relations, or, in more technical language, which 
constitutes the universe out of categories. We may 
grant without difficulty that the contrasted theory, 
which proposes to reduce the universe to an unrelated 
chaos of impressions or sensations, is quite untenable. 
But must we not also grant that in all experience 
there is a refractory element which, though it cannot 
be presented in isolation, nevertheless refuses wholly 
to merge its being in a network of relations, necessary 
as these may be to give it ' significance for us as 
thinking beings ' ? If so, whence does this irreduc- 
ible element arise ? The mind, we are told, is the 
source of relation. What is the source of that which 
is related ? A ' thing-in-itself ' which, by impressing 
the percipient mind, shall furnish the * matter ' for 
which categories provide the ' form,' is a way out of 
the difficulty (if difficulty there be) which raises more 
doubts than it solves. The followers of Kant them- 
selves make haste to point out that this hypothetical 
cause of that which is ' given ' in experience cannot, 
since ex hypothesi it lies beyond experience, be known 
as a cause, or even as existing. Nay, it is not so much 
unknown and unknowable as indescribable and unin- 
telligible ; not so much a riddle whose meaning is 
obscure as mere absence and vacuity of any meaning 
whatever. Accordingly, from the speculations with 



IDEALISM 145 

which we are here concerned it has been dismissed 
with ignominy, and it need not, therefore, detain us 
further. 

But we do not get rid of the difficulty by getting 
rid of Kant's solution of it. His dictum still seems 
to me to remain true, that ' without matter categories 
are empty.' And, indeed, it is hard to see how it is 
possible to conceive a universe in which relations 
shall be all in all, but in which nothing is to be per- 
mitted for the relations to subsist between. Rela- 
tions surely imply a something which is related, 
and if that something is, in the absence of relations, 
' nothing for us as thinking beings,' so relations in 
the absence of that something are mere symbols 
emptied of their signification ; they are, in short, an 
' illegitimate abstraction.' 

Those, moreover, who hold that these all-consti- 
tuting relations are the ' work of the mind ' would 
seem bound also to hold that this concrete world of 
ours, down to its minutest detail, must evolve itself 
a priori out of the movement of ' pure thought.' 
There is no room in it for the ' contingent' ; there is 
no room in it for the ' given ' ; experience itself would 
seem to be a superfluity. And we are at a loss, there- 
fore, to understand why that dialectical process which 
moves, I will not say so convincingly, but at least so 
smoothly, through the abstract categories of ' being,* 
' not-being,' ' becoming,' and so forth, should stumble 
and hesitate when it comes to deal with that world 
of Nature which is, after all, one of the principal 
10 



146 IDEALISM 

subjects about which we desire information. No 
explanation which I remember to have seen makes 
it otherwise than strange that we should, as the ideal- 
ists claim, be able so thoroughly to identify ourselves 
with those thoughts of God which are the necessary 
preliminary to creation, but should so little under- 
stand creation itself ; that we should out of our 
unaided mental resources be competent to reproduce 
the whole ground-plan of the universe, and should 
yet lose ourselves so hopelessly in the humblest of 
its ante-rooms. 

This difficulty at once requires us to ask on what 
ground it is alleged that these constitutive relations 
are the * work of the mind.' It is true, no doubt, that 
ordinary usage would describe as mental products 
the more abstract thoughts (categories), such, for 
example, as ' being,* ' not-being,' ' causation,' ' reci- 
procity,' &c. But it must be recollected, in the first 
place, that transcendental idealism does not, as a 
rule, derive its inspiration from ordinary usage ; and 
in the second place, that even ordinary usage alters 
its procedure when it comes to such more concrete 
cases of relation as, for instance, ' shape ' and ' posi- 
tion,' which, rightly or wrongly, are always con- 
sidered as belonging to the * external ' world, and 
presented by the external world to thought, not cre- 
ated by thought for itself. 

Are the transcendental idealists, then, bound by 
their own most essential principles, in opposition both 
to their arguments against Kant's * thing-in-itself ' 



IDEALISM 147 

and to the ordinary beliefs of mankind, to invest the 
thinking ' self ' with this attribute of causal or quasi- 
causal activity ? It certainly appears to me that they 
are not. Starting, it will be recollected, from the 
analysis (criticism) of experience, they arrived at the 
conclusion that the world of objects exists and has 
a meaning only for the self-conscious ' I ' (subject), 
and that the self-conscious ' I ' only knows itself in 
contrast and in opposition to the world of objects. 
Each is necessary to the other ; in the absence of the 
other neither has any significance. How, then, can 
we venture to say of one that the other is its product ? 
and if we say it of either, must we not in consistency 
insist on saying it of both ? Thus, though the pres- 
ence of a self-conscious principle may be necessary 
to constitute the universe, it cannot be considered 
as the creator of that universe ; or if it be, then must 
we acknowledge that precisely in the same way and 
precisely to the same extent is the universe the cre- 
ator of the self-conscious principle. 

All, therefore, that the transcendental argument 
requires or even allows us to accept, is a ' manifold * 
of relations on the one side, and a bare self-conscious 
principle of unity on the other, by which that mani- 
fold becomes inter-connected in the ' field of a single 
experience.' We are not permitted, except by a 
process of abstraction which is purely temporary and 
provisional, to consider the ' manifold * apart from 
the ' unity,' nor the ' unity ' apart from the ' manifold.' 
The thoughts do not make the thinker, hor the 



14^ IDEALISM 

thinker the thoughts ; but together they constitute 
that Whole or Absolute whose elements, as they are 
mere no -sense apart from one another, cannot in 
strictness be even said to contribute separately to- 
wards the total result. 



Ill 

Now let us consider what bearing this conclusion 
has upon (i) Theology, (2) Ethics, and (3) Science. 

I. As regards Theology, it might be supposed 
that at least idealism provided us with a universe 
which, if not created or controlled by Reason (crea- 
tion and control implying causal action), may yet 
properly be said to be throughout infused by Rea- 
son and to be in necessary harmony with it. But 
on a closer examination difficulties arise which some- 
what mar this satisfactory conclusion. In the first 
place, if theology is to provide us with a ground- 
work for religion, the God of whom it speaks must 
be something more than the bare ' principle of unity ' 
required to give coherence to the multiplicity of 
Nature. Apart from Nature He is, on the theory 
we are considering, a mere metaphysical abstraction, 
the geometrical point through which pass all the 
threads which make up the web of possible experi- 
ence : no fitting object, surely, of either love, rever- 
ence, or devotion. In combination with Nature He 
is no doubt ' the principle of unity/ and all the ful- 
ness of concrete reality besides ; but every quality 



IDEALISM 149 

with which He is thus associated belongs to that por- 
tion of the Absolute Whole from which, by hypoth- 
esis, He distinguishes Himself; and, were it other- 
wise, we cannot find in these qualities, compacted, 
as they are, of good and bad, of noble and base, the 
Perfect Goodness without which religious feelings 
can never find an adequate object. Thus, neither 
the combining principle alone, nor the combining 
principle considered in its union with the multipli- 
city which it combines, can satisfy the requirements 
of an effectual theology. Not the first, because it is 
a barren abstraction ; not the second, because in its 
all-inclusive universality it holds in suspension, with- 
out preference and without repulsion, every element 
alike of the knowable world. Of these none, what- 
ever be its nature, be it good or bad, base or noble, 
can be considered as alien to the Absolute : all are 
necessary, and all are characteristic. 

Of these two alternatives, I understand that it 
is the first which is usually adopted by the school 
of thought with which we are at present concerned. 
It may therefore be desirable to reiterate that a 
* unifying principle ' can, as such, have no qualities, 
moral or otherwise. Lovingkindness, for example, 
and Equity are attributes which, like all attributes, 
belong not to the unifying principle, but to the 
world of objects which it constitutes. They are 
conceptions which belong to the realm of empir- 
ical psychology. Nor can I see any method by 
which they are to be hitched on to the * pure spirit- 



1 50 IDEALISM 

ual subject,* as elements making up its essential 
character. 

2. But if this be so, what is the ethical value of 
that freedom which is attributed by the idealistic 
theory to the self-conscious ' I ' ? It is true that this 
* I ' as conceived by idealism is above all the ' cate- 
gories,' including, of course, the category of causa- 
tion. It is not in space nor in time. It is subject 
neither to mutation nor decay. The stress of ma- 
terial forces touches it not, nor is it in any servitude 
to chance or circumstance, to inherited tendencies 
or acquired habits. But all these immunities and 
privileges it possesses in virtue of its being, not an 
agent in a world of concrete fact, but a thinking 
' subject,* for whom alone, as it is alleged, such a 
world exists. Its freedom is metaphysical, not moral ; 
for moral freedom can only have a meaning at all 
in reference to a being who acts and who wills, 
and is only of real importance for us in relation to 
a being who not only acts, but is acted on, who not 
only wills, but who wills against the opposing influ- 
ences of temptation. Such freedom cannot, it is 
plain, be predicated of a mere ' subject,' nor is the 
freedom proper to a ' subject ' of any worth to man 
as 'object,' to man as known in experience, to man 
fighting his way with varying fortunes against the 
stream of adverse circumstances, in a world made 
up of causes and effects.^ 

^ This proposition would, probably, not be widely dissented from 
by some of the ethical writers of the idealist school. The freedom 



IDEALISM 151 

These observations bring into sufficiently clear 
relief the difficulty which exists, on the idealistic 
theory, in bringing together into any sort of intelli- 
gible association the ' I ' as supreme principle of 
unity, and the ' I ' of empirical psychology, which 

which they postulate is not the freedom merely of the pure self-con- 
scious subject. On the contrary, it is the individual, with all his 
qualities, passions, and emotions, who in their view possesses free 
will. But the ethical value of the freedom thus attributed to self- 
conscious agents seems on further examination to disappear. Man- 
kind, it seems, are on this theory free, but their freedom does not 
exclude determinism, but only that form of determinism which 
consists i7i exteriial constraint. Their actions are upon this view 
strictly prescribed by their antecedents, but these antecedents are 
nothing other than the characters of the agents themselves. 

Now it may seem at first sight plausible to describe that man as 
free whose behaviour is due to ' himself ' alone. But without quar- 
relling over words, it is, I think, plain that, whether it be proper to 
call him free or not, he at least lacks freedom in the sense in which 
freedom is necessary in order to constitute responsibility. It is im- 
possible to say of him that he ' ought,' and therefore he * can'. For 
at any given moment of his life his next action is by hypothesis 
strictly determined. This is also true of every previous moment, 
until we get back to that point in his life's history at which he can- 
not, in any intelligible sense of the term, be said to have a char- 
acter at all. Antecedently to this, the causes which have produced 
him are in no special sense connected with his individuality, but form 
part of the general complex of phenomena which make up the 
world. It is evident, therefore, that every act which he performs 
may be traced to pre-natal, and possibly to purely material, antece- 
dents, and that, even if it be true that what he does is the outcome 
of his character, his character itself is the outcome of causes over 
which he has not, and cannot by any possibility have, the smallest 
control. Such a theory destroys responsibility, and leaves our ac- 
tions the inevitable outcome of external conditions not less com- 
pletely than any doctrine of controlling fate, whether materialistic 
or theological. 



152 IDEALISM 

has desires and fears, pleasures and pains, faculties 
and sensibilities ; which zvas not a little time since, 
and which a little time hence will be no more. The 
* I ' as principle of unity is outside time ; it can have, 
therefore, no history. The ' I * of experience, which 
learns and forgets, which suffers and which enjoys, 
unquestionably has a history. What is the relation 
between the two ? We seem equally precluded from 
saying that they are the same, and from saying that 
they are different. We cannot say that they are the 
same, because they are, after all, divided by the whole 
chasm which distinguishes ' subject ' from ' object.' 
We cannot say they are different, because our feel- 
ings and our desires seem a not less interesting and 
important part of ourselves than a mere unifying 
principle whose functions, after all, are of a purely 
metaphysical character. We cannot say they are 
' two aspects of the same thing,' because there is no 
virtue in this useful phrase which shall empower it 
on the one hand to ear-mark a fragment of the world 
of objects, and say of it, ' this is I,' or, on the other, 
to take the 'pure subject' by which the world of 
objects is constituted, and say of it that it shall be 
itself an object in that world from which its essential 
nature requires it to be self-distinguished. 

But as it thus seems difficult or impossible in- 
telligibly to unite into a personal whole the * pure ' 
and the ' empirical ' Self, so it is difficult or impossible 
to conceive the relations between the pure, though 
limited, self-consciousness which is ' I ' and the uni- 



IDEALISM 153 

versal and eternal Self-consciousness which is God. 
The first has been described as a ' mode ' or ' mani- 
festation ' of the second. But are we not, in using 
such language, falling into the kind of error against 
which, in other connections, the idealists are most 
careful to warn us ? Are we not importing a cate- 
gory which has its meaning and its use in the world 
of objects into a transcendental region where it 
really has neither meaning nor use at all ? Grant, how- 
ever, for the sake of argument, that it has a meaning ; 
grant that we may legitimately describe one ' pure 
subject ' as a ' mode ' or ' manifestation ' of another — 
how is this partial identity to be established ? How 
can we, who start from the basis of our own limited 
self-consciousness, rise to the knowledge of that 
completed and divine self-consciousness of which, 
according to the theory, we share the essential nat- 
ure? 

The difficulty is evaded but not solved in those 
statements of the idealist theory which always speak 
of Thought without specifying w/wse Thought. It 
seems to be thus assumed that the thought is God's, 
and that in rethinking it we share His being. But 
no such assumption would seem to be justifiable. 
For the basis, we know, of the whole theory is a 
' criticism ' or analysis of the essential elements of 
experience. But the criticism must, for each of us, 
be necessarily of /ns own experience, for of no other 
experience can he know anything, except indirectly 
and by way of inference from his own. What, then^ 



154 IDEALISM 

is this criticism supposed to establish (say) for me ? 
Is it that experience depends upon the unification 
by a self-conscious * I ' of a world constituted by re- 
lations? In strictness, No. It can only establish 
that my experience depends upon a unification by 
my self-conscious * I ' of a world of relations present 
to me^ and to me alone. To this * I,' to this particu- 
lar * self-conscious subject,' all other ' I's,' including 
God, must be objects, constituted like all objects by 
relations, rendered possible or significant only by 
their unification in the ' content of a single experi- 
ence ' — namely, my own. In other words, that which 
(if it exists at all) is essentially ' subject' can only be 
known, or thought of, or spoken about, as ^ object.* 
Surely a very paradoxical conclusion. 

It may perhaps be said by way of reply, that in 
talking of particular ' I's ' and particular experiences 
we are using language properly applicable only to 
the ' self ' dealt with by the empirical psychologist, 
the * self ' which is not the * subject,' but the ' object,' 
of experience. I will not dispute about terms ; and 
the relations which exist between the ' pure ego ' 
and the * empirical ego ' are, as I have already said, 
so obscure that it is not always easy to emplo}'' a 
perfectly accurate terminology in endeavouring to 
deal with them. Yet this much would seem to be 
certain. If the words * self,' ' ego,' ' I,' are to be used 
intelligibly at all, they must mean, whatever else 
they do or do not mean, a ' somewhat ' which is self- 
distinguished, not only from every other knowable 



IDEALISM 155 

object, but also from every other possible 'self.* 
What we are ' in ourselves,' apart from the flux of 
thoughts and feelings which move in never-ending 
pageant through the chambers of consciousness, 
metaphysicians have, indeed, found it hard to say. 
Some of them have said we are nothing. But if this 
conclusion be, as I think it is, conformable neither 
to our instinctive beliefs nor to a sound psychology ; 
if we are, as I believe, more than a mere series of 
occurrences, yet it seems equally certain that the 
very notion of Personality excludes the idea of any 
one person being a ' mode ' of any other, and forces 
us to reject from philosophy a supposition which, if 
it be tolerable at all, can find a place only in mys- 
ticism. 

But the idealistic theory pressed to its furthest 
conclusions requires of us to reject, as it appears to 
me, even more than this. We are not only precluded 
by it from identifying ourselves, even partially, with 
the Eternal Consciousness : we are also precluded 
from supposing that either the Eternal Conscious- 
ness or any other consciousness exists, save only our 
own. For, as I have already said, the Eternal Con- 
sciousness, if it is to be known, can only be known 
on the same conditions as any other object of knowl- 
edge. It must be constituted by relations ; it must 
form part of the ' content of experience ' of the 
knower ; it must exist as part of the 'multiplicity' 
reduced to ' unity ' by his self-consciousness. But to 
say that it can only be known on these terms, is to 



15^ IDEALISM 

say that it cannot be known as it exists ; for if it 
exists at all, it exists by hypothesis as Eternal Sub- 
ject, and as such it clearly is not constituted by rela- 
tions, nor is it either a ' possible object of experi- 
ence,' or ' anything- for us as thinking beings.' 

No consciousness, then, is a possible object of 
knowledge for any other consciousness : a statement 
which, on the idealistic theory of knowledge, is 
equivalent to saying that for any one consciousness 
all other consciousnesses are less than non-existent. 
For as that which is ' critically ' shown to be an in^ 
evitable element in experience has thereby conferred 
on it the highest possible degree of reality, so that 
which cannot on any terms become an element in 
experience falls in the scale of reality far below mere 
not-being, and is reduced, as we have seen, to mere 
meaningless no-sense. By this kind of reasoning 
the idealists themselves demonstrate the * I ' to be 
necessary; the unrelated object and the thing-in-itself 
to be impossible. Not less, by this kind of reason- 
ing, must each one of us severally be driven to the 
conclusion that in the infinite variety of the universe 
there is room for but one knowing subject, and that 
this subject is ' himself.'^ 

^ Prof. Caird, in his most interesting and suggestive lecture on 
the Evolution of Religion, puts forward a theory essentially dif- 
ferent from the one I have just been dealing with. In his view, a 
multiplicity of objects apprehended by a single self-conscious subject 
does not suffice to constitute an intelligible universe. The world of 
objects and the perceiving mind are themselves opposites which re- 
quire a higher unity to hold them together. This higher unity is 



IDEALISM 157 



IV 



3. That the transcendental * solipsism' which is 
the natural outcome of such speculations is not less 
inconsistent with science, morality, and common- 
sense than the psychological, or Berkeleian^ form 
of the same creed, is obvious. But without attempt- 
ing further to press idealism to results which, wheth- 
er legitimate or not, all idealists would agree in 

God ; so that by the simplest of metaphysical demonstrations Prof. 
Caird lays deep the foundations of his theology, and proves not 
only that God exists, but that His Being is philosophically involved 
in the very simplest of our experiences. 

I confess, with regret, that this reasoning appears to me incon- 
clusive. Surely we must think of God as, on the transcendental 
theory, we think of ourselves ; that is, as a Subject distinguishing 
itself from, but giving unity to, a world of phenomena. But if 
such a Subject and such a world cannot be conceived without also 
postulating some higher unity in which their differences shall vanish 
and be dissolved, then God Himself would require some yet higher 
deity to explain His existence. If, in short, a multiplicity of phe- 
nomena presented to and apprehended by a conscious ' I ' form to- 
gether an intelligible and self-sufficient whole, then it is hard to see 
by what logic we are to get beyond the solipsism which, as I have 
urged in the text, seems to be the necessary outcome of one form, 
at least, of the transcendental argument. If, on the other hand, 
subject and object cannot form such an intelligible and self-suffi- 
cient whole, then it seems impossible to imagine what is the nature 
of that Infinite One in which the multiplicity of things and persons 
find their ultimate unity. Of such a God we can have no knowl- 
edge, nor can we say that we are formed in His image, or share 
His essence. 

^ Of course I do not mean to suggest that Berkeley was a ' so- 
lipsist.' On the scientific bearing of psychological idealism, see 
Philosophic Doubt, chap. ix. 



158 IDEALISM 

repudiating, let me, in conclusion, point out how 
little assistance this theory is able under any circum- 
stances to afford us in solving important problems 
connected with the Philosophy of Science. 

The psychology of Hume, as we have seen, threw 
doubt upon the very possibility of legitimately fram- 
ing general propositions about the world of objects. 
The observation of isolated and unrelated impres- 
sions of sense, which is in effect what experience 
became reduced to under his process of analysis, 
may generate habits of expectation, but never can 
justify rational beliefs. The law of universal causa- 
tion, for example, can never be proved by a mere 
repetition, however prolonged, of similar sequences, 
though the repetition may, through the association 
of ideas, gradually compel us to expect the second 
term of the sequence whenever the first term comes 
within the field of our observation. So far Hume 
as interpreted by the transcendental idealists. 

Now, how is this difficulty met on the idealistic 
theory ? Somewhat in this way. These categories 
or general principles of relation have not, say the 
idealists, to be collected (so to speak) from individual 
and separate experiences (as the empirical philoso- 
phers believe, but as Hume, the chief among empiri- 
cists, showed to be impossible) ; neither are they, 
as the a priori philosophers supposed, part of the 
original furniture of the observing mind, intended 
by Providence to be applied as occasion arises to 
the world of experience with which by a beneficent, 



IDEALISM 159 

if unexplained, adaptation they find themselves in a 
pre-established harmony. On the contrary, they are 
the ' necessary prtus,' the antecedent condition, of 
there being any experience at all ; so that the difficul- 
ty of subsequently extracting them from experience 
does not arise. The world of phenomena is in truth 
their creation ; so that the conformity between the 
two need not be any subject of surprise. Thus, at 
one and the same time does idealism vindicate ex- 
perience and set the scepticism of the empiricist at 
rest. 

I doubt, however, whether this solution of the 
problem will really stand the test of examination. 
Assuming for the sake of argument that the world 
is constituted by ' categories,' the old difficulty arises 
in a new shape when we ask on what principle those 
categories are in any given case to be applied. For 
they are admittedly not of universal application ; and, 
as the idealists themselves are careful to remind us, 
there is no more fertile source of error than the im- 
portation of them into a sphere wherein they have 
no legitimate business. Take, for example, the cate- 
gory of causation, from a scientific point of view the 
most important of all. By what right does the 
existence of this * principle of relation ' enable us to 
assert that throughout the whole world every event 
must have a cause, and every cause must be invariably 
succeeded by the same event ? Because we can apply 
the category, are we, therefore, bound to apply it ? 
Does any absurdity or contradiction ensue from our 



l60 IDEALISM 

supposing that the order of Nature is arbitrary and 
casual, and that, repeat the antecedent with v/hat 
accuracy we may, there is no security that the ac- 
customed consequent will follow ? I must confess 
that I can perceive none. Of course, we should thus 
be deprived of one of our most useful * principles of 
unification ' ; but this would by no means result in the 
universe resolving itself into that unthinkable chaos 
of unrelated atoms which is the idealist bugbear. 
There are plenty of categories left ; and if the final 
aim of philosophy be, indeed, to find the Many in 
One and the One in Many, this end would be as 
completely, if not as satisfactorily, accomplished by 
conceiving the world to be presented to the thinking 
* subject ' in the haphazard multiplicity of unordered 
succession, as by any more elaborate method. Its 
various elements lying side by side in one Space and 
one Time would still be related together in the con- 
tent of a single experience ; they would still form an 
intelligible whole ; their unification would thus be ef- 
fectually accomplished without the aid of the higher 
categories. But it is evident that a universe so con- 
stituted, though it might not be inconsistent with Phi- 
losophy, could never be interpreted by Science. 

As we saw in the earlier portion of this chapter, 
it is not very easy to understand why, if the universe 
be constituted by relations, and relations are the 
work of the mind, the mind should be dependent on 
experience for finding out anything about the uni- 
verse. But granting the necessity of experience, it 



IDEALISM l6l 

seems as hard to make that experience answer our 
questions on the idealist as on the empirical hypothe- 
sis. Neither on the one theory nor on the other does 
any method exist for extracting general truths out of 
particular observations, unless some general truths are 
first assumed. On the empirical hypothesis there are 
no such general truths. Pure empiricism has, there- 
fore, no claim to be a philosophy. On the idealist 
hypothesis there appears to be only one general truth 
applicable to the whole intelligible world — a world 
which, be it recollected, includes everything in re- 
spect to which language can be significantly used ; a 
world which, therefore, includes the negative as well 
as the positive, the false as well as the true, the im- 
aginary as well as the real, the impossible as well as 
the possible. This single all-embracing truth is that 
the multiplicity of phenomena, w^hatever be its nature, 
must always be united, and only exists in virtue of 
being united, in the experience of a single self-con- 
scious Subject. But this general proposition, what- 
ever be its value, cannot, I conceive, effectually guide 
us in the application of subordinate categories. It 
supplies us with no method for applying one principle 
rather than another within the field of experience. It 
cannot give us information as to what portion of that 
field, if any, is subject to the law of causation, nor 
tell us which of our perceptions, if any, may be taken 
as evidence of the existence of a permanent world 
of objects such as is implied in all scientific doctrine. 
Though, therefore, the old questions come upon us 
II 



l62 IDEALISM 

in a new form, clothed, I will not say shrouded, in a 
new terminology, they come upon us with all the old 
insistence. They are restated, but they are not 
solved ; and I am unable, therefore, to find in idealism 
any escape from the difficulties which, in the region 
of theology, ethics, and science, empiricism leaves 
upon our hands.^ 

* I have made in this chapter no reference to the idealistic theory 
of aesthetics. Holding the views I have indicated upon the general 
import of idealism, such a course seemed unnecessary. But I can- 
not help thinking that even those who find in that theory a more 
satisfactory basis for their convictions than I am able to do, must 
feel that there is something rather forced and arbitrary in the at- 
tempts that have been made to exhibit the artistic fancies of an 
insignificant fraction of the human race during a very brief period of 
its history as essential and important elements in the development 
and manifestation of the world-producing ' Idea.* 



CHAPTER III 

PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 



Briefly, if not adequately, I have now endeavoured 
to indicate the weaknesses which seem to me to be 
inseparable from any empirical theory of the uni- 
verse, and almost equally to beset the idealistic 
theory in the form given to it by its most systematic 
exponents in this country. The reader may perhaps 
feel tempted to ask whether I propose, in what pur- 
ports to be an Introduction to Theology, to pass 
under similar review all the metaphysical systems 
which have from time to time held sway in the 
schools, or have affected the general course of specu- 
lative opinion. He need, however, be under no alarm. 
My object is strictly practical; and I have no con- 
cern with theories, however admirable, which can 
no longer pretend to any living philosophic power 
— which have no de facto claims to present us with 
a reasoned scheme of knowledge, and which can- 
not prove their importance by actually supplying 
grounds for the conviction of some fraction, at least, of 
those by whom these pages may conceivably be read. 
In saying that this condition is not satisfied by 



1 64 PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 

the great historic systems which mark with their 
imperishable ruins the devious course of European 
thought, I must not be understood as suggesting that 
on that account these lack either value or interest. 
All I say is, that their interest is not of a kind which 
brings them properly within the scope of these 
Notes. Whatever be the nature or amount of our 
debt to the great metaphysicians of the past, unless 
here and now we go to them not merely for stray 
arguments on this or that question, but for a rea- 
soned scheme of knowledge which shall include as 
elements our own actual beliefs, their theories are 
not, for the purposes of the present discussion, any 
concern of ours. 

Now, of how many systems, outside the two that 
have already been touched on, can this even plausi- 
bly be asserted ? Run over in memory some of 
the most important. Men value Plato for his imag- 
ination, for the genius with which he hazarded 
solutions of the secular problems which perplex 
mankind, for the finished art of his dialogue, for the 
exquisite beauty of his style. But even if it could be 
said — which it cannot — that he left a system, could 
it be described as a system which, as such, has any 
effectual vitality? It would be difficult, perhaps 
impossible, to sum up our debts to Aristotle. But 
assuredly they do not include a tenable theory of 
the universe. The Stoic scheme of life may still 
touch our imagination ; but who takes any inter- 
est in its metaphysics? Who cares for the Soul 



PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM l6S 

of the world, the periodic conflagrations, and the 
recurring cycles of mundane events ? The Neo- 
Platonists were mystics ; and mysticism is, as I sup- 
pose, an undying element in human thought. But 
who is concerned about their hierarchy of beings 
connecting through infinite gradations the Absolute 
at one end of the scale with Matter at the other ? 

These, however, it may be said, were systems 
belonging to the ancient world ; and mankind have 
not busied themselves with speculation for these 
two thousand years and more without making some 
advance. I agree ; but in the matter of providing 
us with a philosophy — with a reasoned system of 
knowledge — has this advance been as yet sub- 
stantial ? If the ancients fail us, do we, indeed, fare 
much better with the moderns? Are the meta- 
physics of Descartes more living than his physics? 
Do his two substances or kinds of substance, or the 
single substance of Spinoza, or the innumerable 
substances of Leibnitz, satisfy the searcher after 
truth ? From the modern English form of the em- 
piricism which dominated the eighteenth century, 
and the idealism which disputes its supremacy in 
the nineteenth, I have already ventured to express 
a reasoned dissent. Are we, then, to look to such 
schemes as Schopenhauer's philosophy of Will, 
and Hartmann's philosophy of the Unconscious, to 
supply us with the philosophical metaphysics of 
which we are in need ? They have admirers in 
this country, but hardly convinced adherents. Of 



l66 PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 

those who are quite prepared to accept their pes- 
simism, how many are there who take seriously its 
metaphysical foundation ? 

In truth there are but three points of view from 
which it seems worth while to make ourselves ac- 
quainted with the growth, culmination, and decay 
of the various metaphysical dynasties which have 
successively struggled for supremacy in the world 
of ideas. The first is purely historical. Thus re- 
garded, metaphysical systems are simply significant 
phenomena in the general history of man : symp- 
toms of his spiritual condition, aids, it may be, to 
his spiritual growth. The historian of philosophy, 
as such, is therefore quite unconcerned with the 
truth or falsehood of the opinions whose evolution 
he is expounding. His business is merely to ac- 
count for their existence, to exhibit them in their 
proper historical setting, and to explain their char- 
acter and their consequences. But, so considered, 
I find it difficult to believe that these opinions have 
been elements of primary importance to the ad- 
vancement of mankind. All ages, indeed, which 
have exhibited intellectual vigour have cultivated 
one or more characteristic systems of metaphysics ; 
but rarely, as it seems to me, have these systems 
been in their turn important elements in determin- 
ing the character of the periods in which they flour- 
ished. They have been effects rather than causes ; 
indications of the mood in which, under the special 
stress of their time and circumstance, the most de- 



PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 167 

tached intellects have faced the eternal problems of 
humanity ; proofs of the unresting desire of man- 
kind to bring their beliefs into harmony with spec- 
ulative reason. But the beliefs have almost always 
preceded the speculations ; they have frequently 
survived them ; and I cannot convince myself that 
among the just titles to our consideration some- 
times put forward on behalf of metaphysics we may 
count her claim to rank as a powerful instrument of 
progress. 

No doubt — and here we come to the second 
point of view alluded to above — the constant dis- 
cussion of these high problems has not been barren 
merely because it has not as yet led to their solu- 
tion. Philosophers have mined for truth in many 
directions, and the whole field of speculation seems 
cumbered with the dross and lumber of their aban- 
doned workings. But though they have not found 
the ore they sought for, it does not therefore follow 
that their labours have been wholly vain. It is 
something to have realised what not to do. It is 
something to discover the causes of failure, even 
though we do not attain any positive knowledge of 
the conditions of success. It is an even more sub- 
stantial gain to have done something towards dis- 
engaging the questions which require to be dealt 
with, and towards creating and perfecting the ter- 
minology without which they can scarcely be ade- 
quately stated, much less satisfactorily answered. 

And there is yet a third point of view from 



l68 PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 

which past metaphysical speculations are seen to 
retain their value, a point of view which may be 
called (not, I admit, without some little violence to 
accustomed usage) the cesthetic. Because reasoning 
occupies so large a place in metaphysical treatises 
we are apt to forget that, as a rule, these are works 
of imagination at least as much as of reason. Meta- 
physicians are poets who deal with the abstract and 
the super-sensible instead of the concrete and the 
sensuous. To be sure they are poets with a differ- 
ence. Their appropriate and characteristic gifts 
are not the vivid realisation of that which is given 
in experience ; their genius does not prolong, as it 
were, and echo through the remotest regions of feel- 
ing the shock of some definite emotion ; they create 
for us no new worlds of things and persons ; nor 
can it be often said that the product of their la- 
bours is a thing of beauty. Their style, it must be 
owned, has not always been their strong point ; and 
even when it is otherwise, mere graces of presenta- 
tion are but unessential accidents of their work. 
Yet, in spite of all this, they can only be justly es- 
timated by those who are prepared to apply to 
them a quasi-aesthetic standard ; some other stand- 
ard, at all events, than that supplied by purely 
argumentative comment. It may perhaps be shown 
that their metaphysical constructions are faulty, 
that their demonstrations do not convince, that 
their most permanent dialectical triumphs have 
fallen to them in the paths of criticism and negation. 



PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 169 

Yet even then the last word will not have been 
said. For claims to our admiration will still be 
found in their brilliant intuitions, in the subtlety of 
their occasional arguments, in their passion for the 
Universal and the Abiding, in their steadfast faith 
in the rationality of the world, in the devotion with 
which they are content to live and move in realms 
of abstract speculation too far removed from ordi- 
nary interests to excite the slightest genuine sym- 
pathy in the breasts even of the cultivated few. If, 
therefore, we are for a moment tempted, as surely 
may sometimes happen, to contemplate with re- 
spectful astonishment some of the arguments which 
the illustrious authors of the great historic systems 
have thought good enough to support their case, 
let it be remembered that for minds in which the 
critical intellect holds undisputed sway, the crea- 
tion of any system whatever in the present state of 
our knowledge is, perhaps, impossible. Only those 
in whom powers of philosophical criticism are bal- 
anced, or more than balanced, by powers of meta- 
physical imagination can be fitted to undertake the 
task. Though even to them success may be impos- 
sible, at least the illusion of success is permitted ; 
and but for them mankind would fall away in hope- 
less discouragement from its highest intellectual 
ideal, and speculation would be strangled at its 
birth. 

To some, indeed, it may appear as if the loss 
would not, after all, be great. What use, they may 



170 PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 

exclaim, can be found for any system which will 
not stand critical examination ? What value has 
reasoning which does not satisfy the reason ? How 
can we know that these abstruse investigations sup- 
ply even a fragmentary contribution towards a final 
philosophy, until we are able to look back upon 
them from the perhaps inaccessible vantage ground 
to be supplied by this final philosophy itself ? To 
such questionings I do not profess to find a com- 
pletely satisfactory answer. Yet even those who 
feel inclined to rate extant speculations at the low- 
est value will perhaps admit that metaphysics, like 
art, give us something we could ill afford to spare. 
Art may not have provided us with any reflection 
of immortal beauty ; nor metaphysics have brought 
us into communion with eternal truth. Yet both 
may have historic value. In speculation, as in art, 
we find a vivid expression of the changeful mind of 
man, and the interest of both, perhaps, is at its 
highest when they most clearly reflect the spirit of 
the age which gave them birth, when they are most 
racy of the soil from which they sprung. 



II 



To this point I may have to return. But my 
more immediate business is to bring home to the 
reader's mind the consequences which may be 
drawn from the admission — supposing him disposed 



PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM I/I 

to make it — that we have at the present time neither 
a satisfactory system of metaphysics nor a satisfac- 
tory theory of science. Many persons — perhaps it 
would not be too much to say most persons — are 
prepared contentedly to accept the first of these 
propositions ; but it is on the truth of the second 
that I desire to lay at least an equal stress. The 
first man one meets in the street thinks it quite nat- 
ural to accept the opinion that sense-experience is 
the only source of rational conviction ; that every- 
thing to which it does not testify is untrue, or, if 
true, falls within the domain, not of knowledge, but 
of faith. Yet the criticism of knowledge indicated 
in the two preceding chapters shows how one- 
sided is such a view. If faith be provisionally de- 
fined as conviction apart from or in excess of proof, 
then it is upon faith that the maxims of daily life, 
not less than the loftiest creeds and the most far- 
reaching discoveries, must ultimately lean. The 
ground on which constant habit and inherited pre- 
dispositions enable us to tread with a step so easy 
and so assured, is seen on examination to be not less 
hollow beneath our feet than the dim and unfamiliar 
regions which lie beyond. Certitude is found to be 
the child, not of Reason, but of Custom ; and if we 
are less perplexed about the beliefs on which we 
are hourly called upon to act than about those 
which do not touch so closely our obvious and im- 
mediate needs, it is not because the questions sug- 
gested by the former are easier to answer, but be- 



172 PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 

cause as a matter of fact we are much less inclined 
to ask them. 

Now, if this be true, it is plainly a fact of capi- 
tal importance. It must revolutionise our whole 
attitude towards the problems presented to us by 
science, ethics, and theology. It must destroy the 
ordinary tests and standards whereby we measure 
essential truth. In particular, it requires us to see 
what is commonly, if rather absurdly, called the 
conflict between religion and science in a wholly 
new aspect.' We can no longer be content with the 
simple view, once universally accepted, that when- 
ever any discrepancy, real or supposed, occurs be- 
tween the two, science must be rejected as hereti- 
cal ; nor with the equally simple view, to which the 
former has long given place, that every theological 
statement, if unsupported by science, is doubtful ; 
if inconsistent with science, is false. 

Opinions like these are evidently tolerable only 
on the hypothesis that we are in possession of a 
body of doctrine which is not only itself philosoph- 
ically established, but to whose canons of proof 
all other doctrines are bound to conform. But if 
there is no such body of doctrine, what then ? Are 
we arbitrarily to erect one department of belief into 
a law-giver for all the others ? Are we to say that 
though no scheme of knowledge exists, certain in 
its first principles, and coherent in its elaborated 
conclusions, yet that from among the provisional 
schemes which we are inclined practically to accept 



PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM I73 

one is to be selected at random, within whose limits, 
and there alone, the spirit of man may range in con- 
fident security ? 

Such a position is speculatively untenable. It 
involves a use of the Canon of Consistency not 
justified by any philosophy ; and as it is indefensible 
in theory, so it is injurious in practice. For, in truth, 
though the contented acquiescence in inconsistency 
is the abandonment of the philosophic quest, the de- 
termination to obtain consistency at all costs has 
been the prolific parent of many intellectual narrow- 
nesses and many frigid bigotries. It has shown 
itself in various shapes ; it has stifled and stunted 
the free movement of thought in different ages and 
diverse schools of speculation ; its unhappy effects 
may be traced in much theology which professes to 
be orthodox, in much criticism which delights to be 
heterodox. It is, moreover, the characteristic note 
of a not inconsiderable class of intelligences who 
conceive themselves to be specially reasonable be- 
cause they are constantly employed in reasoning, 
and who can find no better method of advancing 
the cause of knowledge than to press to their ex- 
treme logical conclusions principles of which, per- 
haps, the best that can be said is that they contain, 
as it were in solution, some element of truth which 
no reagents at our command will as yet permit us to 
isolate. 



174 PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 



III 



That I am here attacking no imaginary evil will, 
I think, be evident to any reader who recalls the 
general trend of educated opinion during the last 
three centuries. It is, of course, true that in dealing 
with so vague and loosely outlined an object as 

* educated opinion ' we must beware of attributing 
to large masses of men the acceptance of elaborate 
and definitely articulated systems. Systems are, and 
must be, for the few. The majority of mankind are 
content with a mood or temper of thought, an impulse 
not fully reasoned out, a habit guiding them to the 
acceptance and assimilation of some opinions and the 
rejection of others, which acts almost as automati- 
cally as the processes of physical digestion. Behind 
these half-realised motives, and in closest association 
with them, may sometimes, no doubt, be found a 

* theory of things ' which is their logical and explicit 
expression. But it is certainly not necessary, and 
perhaps not usual, that this theory should be clearly 
formulated by those who seem to obey it. Nor for 
our present purpose is there any important distinc- 
tion to be made between the case of the few who 
find a reason for their habitual judgments, and that 
of the many who do not. 

Keeping this caution in mind, we may consider 
without risk of misconception an illustration of the 
misuse of the Canon of Consistency provided for us 



PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 175 

by the theory corresponding to that tendency of 
thought which has played so large a part in the 
development of the modern mind, and which is com- 
monly known as Rationalism. Now what is Ration- 
alism ? Some may be disposed to reply that it is the 
free and unfettered application of human intelligence 
to the problems of life and of the world ; the un- 
prejudiced examination of every question in the dry 
light of emancipated reason. This may be a very 
good account of a particular intellectual ideal; an 
ideal which has been sought after at many periods 
of the world's history, although assuredly it has been 
attained in none. Usage, however, permits and even 
encourages us to employ the word in a much more 
restricted sense: as indicating a special form of that 
reaction against dogmatic theology which became 
prominent at the end of the seventeenth century ; 
which dominated so much of the best thought in the 
eighteenth century, and which has reached its most 
complete expression in the Naturalism which occu- 
pied our attention through the first portion of these 
Notes.^ A reaction of some sort was no doubt in- 

p In spite of this explicit statement I have been supposed by 
some of my critics to have attacked Reason where I have only been 
attacking RationaHsm. I gather, for instance, that Professor Karl 
Pearson has fallen into this mistake in a pamphlet published in 
1895 which purports to be a review of the present work. It con- 
tains a most interesting and curious mixture of bad politics, bad 
philosophy, and bad temper, and is styled ' Reaction.' 

I have modified in this edition the historic description of Ration- 
alism in deference to a well-founded criticism of Professor Pringle 
Pattison (A. Seth). See Mans Place in the Cosmos, p. 256.] 



176 PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 

evitable. Men found themselves in a world where 
Literature, Art, and Science were enormously ex- 
tending the range of human interests; in which 
Religion seemed approachable only through the 
languishing controversies which had burnt with 
so fierce a flame during the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries ; in which accepted theological 
methods had their roots in a very different period of 
intellectual growth, and were ceasing to be appro- 
priate to the new developments. At such a time 
there was, undoubtedly, an important and even a 
necessary work to be done. The mind of man can- 
not, any more than the body, vary in one direction 
alone. The whole organism suffers or gains from 
the change, and every faculty and every limb must 
be somewhat modified in order successfully to meet 
the new demands thrown upon it by the altered bal- 
ance of the remainder. So is it also in matters intel- 
lectual. It is hopeless to expect that new truths and 
new methods of investigation can be acquired with- 
out the old truths requiring to be in some respects 
reconsidered and restated, surveyed under a new 
aspect, measured, perhaps, by a different standard. 
Much had, therefore, to be modified, and something 
— let us admit it — had to be destroyed. The new 
system could hardly produce its best results until 
the refuse left by the old system had been removed ; 
until the waste products were eliminated which, 
like those of a muscle too long exercised, poisoned 



PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 177 

and clogged the tissues in which they had once 
played the part of living and effective elements. 

The world, then, required enlightenment, and the 
rationalists proceeded after their own fashion to en- 
lighten it. Unfortunately, however, their whole pro- 
cedure was tainted by an original vice of method 
which made it impossible to carry on the honour- 
able, if comparatively humble, work of clearance and 
purification without, at the same time, destroying 
much that ought properly to have been preserved. 
They were not content with protesting against prac- 
tical abuses, with vindicating the freedom of science 
from theological bondage, with criticising the de- 
fects and explaining the limitations of the somewhat 
cumbrous and antiquated apparatus of prevalent 
theological controversy — apparatus, no doubt, much 
better contrived for dealing with the points on which 
theologians differ than for defending against a com- 
mon enemy the points on which theologians are for 
the most part agreed. These things, no doubt, to 
the best of their power, they did ; and to the doing 
of them no objection need be raised. The objection 
is to the principle on which the things were done. 
That principle appeared under many disguises, and 
was called by many names. Sometimes describing 
itself as Common-sense, sometimes as Science, some- 
times as Enlightenment, with infinite varieties of ap- 
plication and great diversity of doctrine. Rationalism 
consisted essentially in the application, consciously 
or unconsciously, of one great method to the decision 



178 PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 

of every controversy, to the moulding of every creed. 
Did a belief square with a view of the universe 
based exclusively upon the prevalent mode of inter- 
preting sense-perception ? If so, it might survive. 
Did it clash with such mode, or lie beyond it? It 
was superstitious ; it was unscientific ; it was ridicu- 
lous ; it was incredible. Was it neither in harmony 
with nor antagonistic to such a view, but simply be- 
side it? It might live on until it became atrophied 
from lack of use, a mere survival of a dead past. 

These judgments were not, as a rule, supported 
by any very profound arguments. Rationalists as 
such are not philosophers. They are not pantheists 
nor speculative materialists. They ignore, if they 
do not despise, metaphysics, and in practice eschew 
the search for first principles. But they judge as 
men of the world, reluctant either to criticise too 
closely methods which succeed so admirably in 
everyday affairs, or to admit that any other methods 
can possibly be required by men of sense. 

Of course, a principle so loosely conceived has 
led at different times and in different stages of knowl- 
edge to very different results. Through the greater 
portion of the world's history the * ordinary mode of 
interpreting sense-perception ' has been perfectly 
consistent with so-called ' supernatural ' phenomena. 
It may become so again. And if during the rational- 
ising centuries this has not been the case, it is be- 
cause the interpretation of sense-perceptions has 



PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 1 79 

during that period been more and more governed by 
that Naturalistic theory of the world to which it has 
been steadily gravitating. It is true that the process 
of eliminating incongruous beliefs has been gradual. 
The general body of rationalisers have been slow to 
see and reluctant to accept the full consequences of 
their own principles. The assumption that the kind 
of * experience ' which gave us natural science was 
the sole basis of knowledge did not at first, or neces- 
sarily, carry with it the further inference that noth- 
ing deserved to be called knowledge which did not 
come within the circle of the natural sciences. But 
the inference was practically, if not logically, in- 
evitable. Theism, Deism, Design, Soul, Conscience, 
Morality, Immortality, Freedom, Beauty — these and 
cognate words associated with the memory of great 
controversies mark the points at which rationalists 
who are not also naturalists have sought to come to 
terms with the rationalising spirit, or to make a stand 
against its onward movement. It has been in vain. 
At some places the fortunes of battle hung long in the 
balance ; at others the issues may yet seem doubtful. 
Those who have given up God can still make a fight 
for conscience ; those wh© have abandoned moral re- 
sponsibility may still console themselves with artistic 
beauty. But, to my thinking, at least, the struggle 
can have but one termination. Habit and education 
may delay the inevitable conclusion ; they cannot in 
the end avert it. For these ideas are no native growth 



l8o PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM 

of a rationalist epoch, strong in their harmony with 
contemporary moods of thought. They are the prod- 
ucts of a different age, survivals from, as some think, 
a decaying system. And howsoever stubbornly they 
may resist the influences of an alien environment, if 
this undergoes no change, in the end they must 
surely perish. 

Naturalism, then, the naturalism whose practical 
consequences have already occupied us so long, is 
nothing more than the result of rationalising methods 
applied with pitiless consistency to the whole circuit 
of belief; it is the completed product of rationalism, 
the final outcome of using the ' current methods of 
interpreting sense-perception ' as the universal in- 
strument for determining the nature and fixing the 
limits of human knowledge. What wealth of spiritual 
possession this creed requires us to give up I have 
already explained. What, then, does it promise us in 
exchange? It promises us Consistency. Religion 
may perish at its touch, it may strip Virtue and 
Beauty of their most precious attributes ; but in ex- 
change it promises us Consistency. True, the promise 
is in any circumstances but imperfectly kept. This 
creed, which so arrogantly requires that every- 
thing is to be made consistent with it, is not, as we 
have seen, consistent with itself. The humblest at- 
tempts to co-ordinate and to justify the assumptions 
on which it proceeds with such unquestioning con- 
fidence bring to light speculative perplexities and 
contradictions whose very existence seems unsus- 



PHILOSOPHY AND RATIONALISM l8l 

pected, whose solution is not even attempted. But 
even were it otherwise we should still be bound to 
protest against the assumption that consistency is a 
necessity of the intellectual life, to be purchased, if 
need be, at famine prices. It is a valuable commod- 
ity, but it may be bought too dear. No doubt a 
principal function of Reason is to smooth away con- 
tradictions, to knock off corners, and to fit, as far as 
may be, each separate belief into its proper place 
within the framework of one harmonious creed. No 
doubt, also, it is impossible to regard any theory 
which lacks self-consistency as either satisfactory or 
final. But principles going far beyond admissions 
like these are required to compel us to acquiesce in 
rationalising methods and naturalistic results, to the 
destruction of every form of belief with which they 
do not happen to agree. Before such terms of sur- 
render are accepted, at least the victorious system 
must show, not merely that its various parts are 
consistent with each other, but that the whole is 
authenticated by Reason. Until this task is accom- 
plished (and how far at present it is from being ac- 
complished in the case of naturalism the reader 
knows) it would be an act of mere blundering Un- 
reason to set up as the universal standard of belief a 
theory of things which itself stands in so great need 
of rational defence, or to make a reckless and un- 
thinking application of the canon of consistency when 
our knowledge of first principles is so manifestly 
defective. 



CHAPTER IV 

RATIONALIST ORTHODOXY 

At this point, however, it may perhaps occur to the 
reader that I have somewhat too lightly assumed 
that Rationalism is the high-road to Naturalism. 
Why, it may be asked, is there any insuperable 
difficulty in framing another scheme of belief which 
shall permanently satisfy the requirements of consist- 
ency, and yet harmonise in its general procedure 
with the rationalising spirit ? Why are we to as- 
sume that the extreme type of this mode of thought 
is the only stable type ? Such doubts would be the 
more legitimate because there is actually in exis- 
tence a scheme of great historic importance, and 
some present interest, by which it has been sought 
to run Modern Science and Theology together into 
a single coherent and self-sufficient system of 
thought, by the simple process of making Science 
supply all the premises on which theological conclu- 
sions are afterwards based. If this device be really 
adequate, no doubt much of what was said in the 
last chapter, and much that will have to be said 
in future chapters, becomes superfluous. If 'our 
ordinary method of interpreting sense-perception,' 
which gives us Science, is able also to supply us 



RATIONALIST ORTHODOXY 183 

with Theology, then at least, whether it be philo- 
sophically valid or not, the majority of mankind may 
very well rest content with it until philosophers 
come to some agreement about a better. If it does 
not satisfy the philosophic critic, it will probably 
satisfy everyone else ; and even the philosophic 
critic need not quarrel with its practical outcome. 

The system by which these results are thought 
to be attained pursues the following method. It 
divides Theology into Natural and Revealed. Nat- 
ural Theology expounds the theological beliefs 
which may be arrived at by a consideration of the 
general course of Nature as this is explained to us 
by Science. It dwells principally upon the number- 
less examples of adaptation in the organic world, 
which apparently display the most marvellous indi- 
cations of ingenious contrivance, and the nicest ad- 
justment of means to ends. From facts like these 
it is inferred that Nature has an intelligent and a 
powerful Creator. From the further fact that these 
adjustments and contrivances are in a large number 
of cases designed for the interests of beings capable 
of pleasure and pain, it is inferred that the Creator 
is not only intelligent and powerful, but also benevo- 
lent ; and the inquiring mind is then supposed to be 
sufficiently prepared to consider without prejudice 
the evidence for there having been a special Revela- 
tion by which further truths may have been im- 
parted, not otherwise accessible to our unassisted 
powers of speculation. 



1 84 RATIONALIST ORTHODOXY 

The evidences of Revealed Religion are not 
drawn, like those of Natural Religion, from general 
laws and widely disseminated particulars ; but they 
profess none the less to be solely based upon facts 
which, according to the classification I have adhered 
to throughout these Notes, belong to the scientific 
order. According to this theory, the logical bur- 
den of the entire theological structure is thrown 
upon the evidence for certain events which took 
place long ago, and principally in a small district to 
the east of the Mediterranean, the occurrence of 
which it is sought to prove by the ordinary meth- 
ods of historical investigation, and by these alone — 
unless, indeed, we are to regard as an important 
ally the aforementioned presumption supplied by 
Natural Theology. It is true, of course, that the 
immediate reason for accepting the beliefs of Re- 
vealed Religion is that the religion is revealed. But 
it is thought to be revealed because it was promul- 
gated by teachers who were inspired ; the teach- 
ers are thought to have been inspired because 
they worked miracles; and they are thought to 
have worked miracles because there is historical 
evidence of the fact, which it is supposed would be 
more than sufficient to produce conviction in any 
unbiassed mind. 

Now it must be conceded that if this general 
train of reasoning be assumed to cover the whole 
ground of * Christian Evidences,' then, whether it 
be conclusive or inconclusive, it does at least attain 



RATIONALIST ORTHODOXY 185 

the desideratum of connecting Science on the one 
hand, Religion — 'Natural' and 'Revealed' — on the 
other, into one single scheme of interconnected prop- 
ositions. But it attains it by making Theology in 
form a mere annex or appendix to Science ; a mere 
footnote to history ; a series of conclusions inferred 
from data which have been arrived at by precise- 
ly the same methods as those which enable us to 
pronounce upon the probability of any other events 
in the past history of man, or of the world in which 
he lives. We are no longer dealing with a creed 
whose real premises lie deep in the nature of 
things. It is no question of metaphysical specula- 
tion, moral intuition, or mystical ecstasy with which 
we are concerned. We are asked to believe the 
Universe to have been designed by a Deity for the 
same sort of reason that we believe Canterbury 
Cathedral to have been designed by an architect ; 
and to believe in the events narrated in the Gospels 
for the same sort of reason that we believe in the 
murder of Thomas a Becket. 

Now I am not concerned to maintain that these 
arguments are bad ; on the contrary, my personal 
opinion is that, as far as they go, they are good. 
The argument, or perhaps I should say an argu- 
ment, from design, in some shape or other, will al- 
ways have value ; while the argument from history 
must always form a part of the evidence for any 
historical religion. The first will, in my opinion, 
survive any presumptions based upon the doctrine 



1 86 RATIONALIST ORTHODOXY 

of natural selection ; the second will survive the con- 
sequences of critical assaults. But more than this is 
desirable ; more than this is, indeed, necessary. For 
however good arguments of this sort are, or may be 
made, they are not equal by themselves to the task 
of upsetting so massive an obstacle as developed 
Naturalism. They have not, as it were, sufficient 
intrinsic energy to effect so great a change. They 
may not be ill directed, but they lack momentum. 
They may not be technically defective, but they are 
assuredly practically inadequate. 

To many this may appear self-evident. Those 
who doubt it will, I think, be convinced of its truth 
if they put themselves for a moment in the position 
of a man trained on the strictest principles of Natu- 
ralism ; acquainted with the general methods and 
results of Science ; cognisant of the general course 
of secular human history, and of the means b}'- 
which the critic and the scholar have endeavoured 
to extort the truth from the records of the past. To 
such a man the growth and decay of great religions, 
the legends of wonders worked and suffering en- 
dured by holy men in many ages and in different 
countries, are familiar facts — to be fitted somehow 
into his general scheme of knowledge. They are 
phenomena to be explained by anthropology and 
sociology, instructive examples of the operation of 
natural law at a particular stage of human develop- 
ment — this, and nothing more. 

Now present to one whose mind has been so 



RATIONALIST ORTHODOXY 1 87 

prepared and disciplined, first this account of Natu- 
ral Religion, and then this version of the evidences 
for Revelation. So far as Natural Religion is con- 
cerned he will probably content himself with say- 
ing, that to argue from the universality of causation 
within the world to the necessity of First Cause 
outside the world is a process of very doubtful va- 
lidity : that to argue from the character of the 
world to the benevolence of its Author is a process 
more doubtful still : but that, in any case, we need 
not disturb ourselves about matters we so little 
understand, inasmuch as the Deity thus inferred, 
if He really exists, completed the only task which 
Natural Religion supposes Him to have undertaken 
when, in a past immeasurably remote, He set going 
the machinery of causes and effects, which has ever 
since been in undisturbed operation, and about 
which alone we have any real sources of information. 
Supposing, however, you have induced your 
Naturalistic philosopher to accept, if only for the 
sake of argument, your version of Natural Religion, 
what will he say to your method of extracting the 
proofs of Revealed Religion from the Gospel his- 
tory? Explain to him that there is good historic 
evidence of the usual sort for believing that for one 
brief interval during the history of the Universe, 
and in one small corner of this planet, the continu- 
ous chain of universal causation has been broken ; 
that in an insignificant country inhabited by an un- 
important branch of the Semitic peoples events are 



1 88 RATIONALIST ORTHODOXY 

alleged to have taken place which, if they really 
occurred, at once turn into foolishness the whole 
theory in the light of which he has been accus- 
tomed to interpret human experience, and convey 
to us knowledge which no mere contemplation of 
the general order of Nature could enable us even 
dimly to anticipate. What would be his reply ? 
His reply would be, nay, is (for our imaginary in- 
terlocutor has unnumbered prototypes in the world 
about us), that questions like these can scarcely be 
settled by the mere accumulation of historic proofs. 
Granting all that was asked, and more, perhaps, 
than ought to be conceded ; granting that the evi- 
dence for these wonders was far stronger than any 
that could be produced in favour of the apocryphal 
miracles which crowd the annals of every people ; 
granting even that the evidence seemed far more 
than sufficient to establish any incident, however 
strange, which does not run counter to the rec- 
ognised course of Nature ; what then ? We were 
face to face with a difficulty, no doubt ; but the in- 
terpretation of the past was necessarily full of dif- 
ficulties. Conflicts of testimony with antecedent 
probability, conflicts of different testimonies with 
each other, were the familiar perplexities of the 
historic inquirer. In thousands of cases no abso- 
lutely satisfactory solution could be arrived at. 
Possibly the Gospel histories Avere among these. 
Neither the theory of myths, nor the theory of 
contemporary fraud, nor the theory of late inven- 



RATIONALIST ORTHODOXY 1 89 

tion, nor any other which the ingenuity of critics 
could devise, might provide a perfectly clean-cut 
explanation of the phenomena. But at least it 
might be said with confidence that no explanation 
could be less satisfactory than one which required 
us, on the strength of three or four ancient docu- 
ments — at the best written by eye-witnesses of little 
education and no scientific knowledge, at the worst 
spurious and of no authority — to remodel and revo- 
lutionise every principle which governs us with an 
unquestioned jurisdiction in our judgments on the 
Universe at large. 

Thus, slightly modifying Hume, might the dis- 
ciple of Naturalism reply. And as against the 
rationalising theologian, is not his answer conclu- 
sive ? The former has borrowed the premises, the 
methods, and all the positive conclusions of Nat- 
uralism. He advances on the same strategic prin- 
ciples, and from the same base of operations. And 
though he professes by these means to have over- 
run a whole continent of alien conclusions with 
which Naturalism will have nothing to do, can he 
permanently retain his conquests ? Is it not certain 
that the huge expanse of his theology, attached by 
so slender a tie to the main system of which it is in- 
tended to be a dependency, will sooner or later have 
to be abandoned ; and that the weak and artificial 
connection which has been so ingeniously contrived 
will snap at the first strain to which it shall be sub- 
jected by the forces either of criticism or sentiment? 



PART III 

SOME CAUSES OF BELIEF 



CHAPTER I 

CAUSES OF EXPERIENCE 



So far the results at which we have arrived may be 
not unfairly described as purely negative. In the 
first part of these Notes I endeavoured to show that 
Naturalism was practically insufficient. In the first 
chapter of Part II. I indicated the view that it was 
speculatively incoherent. The obvious conclusion 
was therefore drawn, that under these circumstances 
it was in the highest degree absurd to employ with 
an unthinking rigour the canon of consistency as if 
Rationalism, which is Naturalism in embryo, or 
Naturalism, which is Rationalism developed, placed 
us in the secure possession of some unerring 
standard of truth to which all our beliefs must be 
made to conform. A brief criticism of one theolog- 
ical scheme, by which it has been sought to avoid 
the narrownesses of Naturalism without break- 
ing with Rationalising methods, confirmed the con- 
clusion that any such procedure is predestined to 
be ineffectual, and that no mere inferences of the 
ordinary pattern, based upon ordinary experience, 
will enable us to break out of the Naturalistic 
prison-house. 
13 



194 CAUSES OF EXPERIENCE 

But if Naturalism by itself be practically insuf- 
ficient, if no conclusion based on its affirmations will 
enable us to escape from the cold grasp of its nega- 
tions, and if, as I think, the contrasted system of 
Idealism has not as yet got us out of the difficulty, 
what remedy remains? One such remedy consists 
in simply setting up side by side with the creed of 
natural science another and supplementary set of 
beliefs, which may minister to needs and aspirations 
which science cannot meet, and may speak amid 
silences which science is powerless to break. The 
natural world and the spiritual world, the world 
which is immediately subject to causation and the 
world which is immediately subject to God, are, on 
this view, each of them real, and each of them the 
objects of real knowledge. But the laws of the 
natural world are revealed to us by the discoveries 
of science ; while the laws of the spiritual world are 
revealed to us through the authority of spiritual 
intuitions, inspired witnesses, or divinely guided 
institutions. And the two regions of knowledge lie 
side by side, contiguous but not connected, like em- 
pires of different race and language, which own no 
common jurisdiction nor hold any intercourse with 
each other, except along a disputed and wavering 
frontier where no superior power exists to settle 
their quarrels or determine their respective limits. 

To thousands of persons this patchwork scheme 
of belief, though it may be in a form less sharply 
defined, has, in substance, commended itself ; and if 



CAUSES OF EXPERIENCE 19S 

and in so far as it really meets their needs I have 
nothing to say against it, and can hold out small 
hope of bettering it. It is much more satisfactory 
as regards its content than Naturalism ; it is not 
much less philosophical as regards its method; 
and it has the practical merit of supplying a rough- 
and-ready expedient for avoiding the consequences 
which follow from a premature endeavour to force 
the general body of belief into the rigid limits of 
one too narrow system. 

It has, however, obvious inconveniences. There 
are many persons, and they are increasing in num- 
ber, who find it difficult or impossible to acquiesce 
in this unconsidered division of the ' Whole * of 
knowledge into two or more unconnected frag- 
ments. Naturalism may be practically unsatisfac- 
tory. But at least the positive teaching of Natural- 
ism has secured general assent ; and it shocks their 
philosophic instinct for unity to be asked to patch 
and plaster this accepted creed with a number of 
heterogeneous propositions drawn from an entirely 
different source, and on behalf of which no such 
common agreement can be claimed. 

What such persons ask for, and rightly, is a 
philosophy, a scheme of knowledge, which shall 
give rational unity to an adequate creed. But, as 
the reader knows, I have it not to give ; nor does it 
even seem to me that we have any right to flatter 
ourselves that we are on the verge of discovering 
some all-reconciling theory by which each inevitable 



196 CAUSES OF EXPERIENCE 

claim of our complex nature may be harmonised 
under the supremacy of Reason. Unity, then, if it 
is to be attained at all, must be sought for, so to 
speak, at some lower speculative level. We must 
either pursue the Rationalising and Naturalistic 
method already criticised, and compel the desired 
unification of belief by the summary rejection of 
everything which does not fit into some convenient 
niche in the scheme of things developed by em- 
pirical methods out of sense-perception ; or if, either 
for the reasons given in the earlier chapters of these 
Notes, or for others, we reject this method, we must 
turn for assistance towards a new quarter, and apply 
ourselves to the problem by the aid of some more 
comprehensive, or at least more manageable, prin- 
ciple. 

II 

To this end let us temporarily divest ourselves 
of all philosophic preoccupation. Provisionally re- 
stricting ourselves to the scientific point of view, 
let us forbear to consider beliefs from the side of 
proof, and let us survey them for a season from the 
side of origin only, and in their relation to the 
causes which gave them birth. Thus considered 
they are, of course, mere products of natural con- 
ditions; psychological growths comparable to the 
flora and fauna of continents or oceans ; objects of 
which we may say that they are useful or harmful, 
plentiful or rare, but not, except parenthetically and 



CAUSES OF EXPERIENCE I97 

with a certain irrelevance, that they are true or 
untrue. 

How, then, would these beliefs appear to an in- 
vestigator from another planet who, applying the 
ordinary methods of science, and in a spirit of de- 
tached curiosity, should survey them from the out- 
side, with no other object than to discover the place 
they occupied in the natural history of the earth 
and its inhabitants ? He would note, I suppose, to 
begin with, that the vast majority of these beliefs 
were the short-lived offspring of sense-perception, 
instinctive judgments on observed matter-of-fact. 
' The sun is shining,' ' there is somebody in the room,' 
' I feel tired,' would be examples of this class ; whose 
members, from the nature of the case, refer imme- 
diately only to the passing moment, and die as soon 
as they are born. If now our investigator turned his 
attention to the causes of these beliefs of perception, 
he would, of course, discover, in the first place, that, 
when normal, they were invariably due to the action 
of external objects upon the organism, and more par- 
ticularly upon the nervous system, of the percipient ; 
and in the second place, that though these beliefs 
were thus all due to a certain kind of neural change, 
the converse of the proposition is by no means true, 
since, taking the organic world at large, it was by 
no means the case that neural changes of this kind 
invariably, or even usually, issued in beliefs of per- 
ception, or, indeed, in any psychical result whatever. 

For consider how the case must present itself to 



198 CAUSES OF EXPERIENCE 

our supposed observer. He would see a series of or- 
ganisms possessed of nervous systems ranging from 
the most rudimentary type to the most complex. 
He would observe that the action of the exterior 
world upon those systems varied, in like manner, 
from the simple irritation of the nerve-tissue to the 
multitudinous correspondences and adjustments in- 
volved in some act of vision by man or one of the 
higher mammals. And he would conclude, and 
rightly, that between the upper and the lower mem- 
bers of the scale there were differences of degree, 
but not of kind ; and that existing gaps might be 
conceived as so filled in that each type might melt 
into the one immediately below it by insensible gra- 
dations. 

If, however, he endeavoured to draw up a scale 
of psychical effects whose degrees should correspond 
with this scale of physiological causes, two results 
would make themselves apparent. The first is, that 
the lower part of the psychical scale would be a blank, 
because in the case of the simple organisms nervous 
changes carried with them no mental consequents. 
The second is, that even when mental consequents 
do appear, they form no continuous series like their 
physiological antecedents ; but, on the contrary, 
those at the top of the scale are found to differ in 
something more than degree from those which appear 
lower down. We do not, for example, suppose that 
protozoa can properly be said to feel, nor that every 
animal which feels can properly be said to form 



CAUSES OF EXPERIENCE 199 

judgments or to possess immediate beliefs of percep- 
tion. 

One conclusion our observer would, I suppose, 
draw from facts like these is, that while neural sen- 
sibility to external influences is a widespread bene- 
fit to organic Nature, the feelings, and still more 
the beliefs, to which in certain cases it gives rise are 
relatively insignificant phenomena, useful supple- 
ments to the purely physiological apparatus, neces- 
sary, perhaps, to its highest developments, but still, 
if operative at all,^ rather in the nature of final im- 
provements to the machinery than of parts essential 
to its working. 

A like result would attend his study of the next 
class of beliefs that might fall under his notice, 
those, namely, which, though they do not relate to 
things or events within the field of perception, like 
those we have just been considering, are yet not 
less immediate in their character. Memories of the 
past are examples of this type ; I should be in- 
clined to add, though I do not propose here to 
justify my opinion, certain instinctive and, so to 
speak, automatic expectations about the future or 
that part of the present which does not come with- 
in the reach of direct experience. Like the beliefs 
of perception of which we have been speaking, 
they would seem to be the psychical side of neu- 
ral changes which, at least in their simpler forms, 
need be accompanied by no psychical manifestation. 
^See Note on Chapter V., page 285. 



200 CAUSES OF EXPERIENCE 

Physiological co-ordination is sufficient by itself to 
perform services for the lower animals similar in 
kind to those which, in the case of man, are use- 
fully, or even necessarily, supplemented by their 
beliefs of memory and of expectation. 

These two classes of belief, relating respectively 
to the present and the absent, cover the whole 
ground of what is commonly called experience, 
and something more. They include, therefore, at 
least in rudimentary form, all particulars which, on 
any theory, are required for scientific induction; 
and, according to empiricism in its older forms, 
they supply not this only, but also the whole of the 
raw material, without any exception, out of which 
reason must subsequently fashion whatever stock 
of additional beliefs it is needful for mankind to 
entertain. 

Our Imaginary Observer, however, quite indif- 
ferent to mundane theories as to what ought to 
produce conviction, and intent only on discovering 
how convictions are actually produced, would soon 
find out that there were other influences besides 
reasoning required to supplement the relatively 
simple physiological and psychological causes 
which originate the immediate beliefs of perception, 
memory, and expectation. These immediate be- 
liefs belong to man as an individual. They involve 
no commerce between mind and mind. They might 
equally exist, and would equally be necessary, if 
each man stood face to face with material Nature 



CAUSES OF EXPERIENCE 201 

in friendless isolation. But they neither provide, 
nor by any merely logical extension can be made to 
provide, the apparatus of beliefs which we find act- 
ually connected with the higher scientific social and 
spiritual life of the race. These also are, without 
doubt, the product of antecedent causes — causes 
many in number and most diverse in character. 
They presuppose, to begin with, the beliefs of per- 
ception, memory, and expectation in their element- 
ary shape; and they also imply the existence of 
an organism fitted for their hospitable reception 
by ages of ancestral preparation. But these condi- 
tions, though necessary, are clearly not enough ; 
the appropriate environment has also to be pro- 
vided. And though I shall not attempt to analyse 
with the least approach to completeness the ele- 
ments of which that environment consists, yet it 
contains one group of causes so important in their 
collective operation, and yet in popular discourse 
so often misrepresented, that a detailed notice of it 
seems desirable. 



CHAPTER II 

AUTHORITY AND REASON 



This group is perhaps best described by the term 
Authority, a word which by a sharp transition 
transports us at once into a stormier tract of specu- 
lation than we have been traversing in the last few 
pages, though, as my readers may be disposed to 
think, for that reason, perhaps, among others, a 
tract more nearly adjacent to theology and the 
proper subject-matter of these Notes. However 
this may be, it is, I am afraid, the fact that the dis- 
cussion on which I am about to enter must bring us 
face to face with one problem, at least, of which, 
so far as I am aware, no entirely satisfactory solu- 
tion has yet been reached ; which certainly I can- 
not pretend to solve ; which can, therefore, for the 
present only be treated in a manner provisional, 
and therefore unsatisfactory. Nor are these peren- 
nial and inherent difficulties the only obstacles we 
have to contend with. For the subject is, unfort- 
unately, one familiar to discussion, and, like all 
topics which have been the occasion of passionate 
debate, it is one where party watchwords have 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 203 

exercised their perturbing and embittering influ- 
ence. 

It would be, perhaps, an exaggeration to assert 
that the theory of authority has been for three cen- 
turies the main battlefield whereon have met the 
opposing forces of new thoughts and old. But if so, 
it is only because, at this point at least, victory is 
commonly supposed long ago to have declared itself 
decisively in favour of the new. The very statement 
that the rival and opponent of authority is reason ^ 
seems to most persons equivalent to a declaration 
that the latter must be in the right, and the former 
in the wrong ; while popular discussion and specula- 
tion have driven deep the general opinion that au- 
thority serves no other purpose in the economy of 
Nature than to supply a refuge for all that is most 
bigoted and absurd. 

The current theory by which these views are sup- 
ported appears to be something of this kind. Every- 
one has a ' right ' to adopt any opinions he pleases. 
It is his ' duty,' before exercising this ' right,' criti- 
cally to sift the reasons by which such opinions may 
be supported, and so to adjust the degree of his con- 
victions that they shall accurately correspond with 
the evidences adduced in their favour. Authority, — . 
therefore, has no place among the legitimate causes 
of belief. If it appears among them, it is as an in- 

^ It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to note that throughout this 
chapter I use Reason in its ordinary and popular, not in its tran- 
scendental, sense. There is no question here of the Logos or Ab- 
solute Reason. 



204 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

truder, to be jealously hunted down and mercilessly 
expelled. Reason, and reason only, can be safely 
permitted to mould the convictions of mankind. By 
its inward counsels alone should beings who boast 
that they are rational submit to be controlled. 

Sentiments like these are among the common- 
places of political and social philosophy. Yet, looked 
at scientifically, they seem to me to be, not merely 
erroneous, but absurd. Suppose for a moment a com- 
munity of which each member should deliberately 
set himself to the task of throwing off so far as pos- 
sible all prejudices due to education ; where each 
should consider it his duty critically to examine the 
grounds whereon rest every positive enactment and 
every moral precept which he has been accustomed 
to obey ; to dissect all the great loyalties which make 
social life possible, and all the minor conventions 
which help to make it easy ; and to weigh out with 
scrupulous precision the exact degree of assent 
which in each particular case the results of this proc- 
ess might seem to justify. To say that such a com- 
munity, if it acted upon the opinions thus arrived 
at, would stand but a poor chance in the struggle 
for existence is to say far too little. It could never 
even begin to be ; and if by a miracle it was created, 
it would without doubt immediately resolve itself 
into its constituent elements. 

For consider by way of illustration the case of 
Morality. If the right and the duty of private 
judgment be universal, it must be both the privilege 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 205 

and the business of every man to subject the maxims 
of current morality to a critical examination ; and 
unless the examination is to be a farce, every man 
should bring to it a mind as little warped as pos- 
sible by habit and education, or the unconscious bias 
of foregone conclusions. Picture, then, the condi- 
tion of a society in which the successive generations 
would thus in turn devote their energies to an im- 
partial criticism of the ' traditional * view. What 
qualifications, natural or acquired, for such a task 
we are to attribute to the members of this emanci- 
pated community I know not. But let us put them 
at the highest. Let us suppose that every man and 
woman, or rather every boy and girl (for ought 
Reason to be ousted from her rights in persons 
under twenty-one years of age ?), is endowed with 
the aptitude and training required to deal with 
problems like these. Arm them with the most re- 
cent methods of criticism, and set them down to the 
task of estimating with open minds the claims which 
charity, temperance and honesty, murder, theft and 
adultery respectively have upon the approval or 
disapproval of mankind. What the result of such 
an experiment would be, what wild chaos of opin- 
ions would result from this fiat of the Uncreating 
Word, I know not. But it might well happen that 
even before our youthful critics got so far as a re- 
arrangement of the Ten Commandments, they might 
find themselves entangled in the preliminary ques- 
tion whether judgments conveying moral approba- 



206 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

tion and disapprobation were of a kind which rea- 
sonable beings should be asked to entertain at all ; 
whether ' right ' and ' wrong ' were words repre- 
senting anything more permanent and important 
than certain likes and dislikes which happen to be 
rather widely disseminated, and more or less arbi- 
trarily associated with social and legal sanctions. I 
conceive it to be highly probable that the con- 
clusions at which on this point they would arrive 
would be of a purely negative character. The ethi- 
cal systems competing for acceptance would by 
their very numbers and variety suggest suspicions 
as to their character and origin. Here, would our 
students explain, is a clear presumption to be found 
on the very face of these moralisings that they were 
contrived, not in the interests of truth, but in the in- 
terests of traditional dogma. How else explain the 
fact, that while there is no great difference of opin- 
ion as to what things are right or wrong, there is no 
semblance of agreement as to why they are right 
or why they are wrong. All authorities concur, for 
instance, in holding that it is wrong to commit mur- 
der. But one philosopher tells us that it is wrong 
because it is inconsistent with the happiness of man- 
kind, and that to do anything inconsistent with the 
happiness of mankind is wrong. Another tells us 
that it is contrary to the dictates of conscience, and 
that everything which is contrary to the dictates of 
conscience is wrong. A third tells us that it is 
against the commandments of God, and that every- 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 207 

thing which is against the commandments of God is 
wrong. A fourth tells me that it leads to the gal- 
lows, and that, inasmuch as being hanged involves 
a sensible diminution of personal happiness, creat- 
ures who, like man, are by nature incapable of 
doing otherwise than seek to increase the sum of 
their personal pleasures and diminish the sum of 
their personal pains cannot, if they really compre- 
hend the situation, do anything which may bring 
their existence to so distressing a termination. 

Now whence, it would be asked, this curious mixt- 
ure of agreement and disagreement ? How account 
for the strange variety exhibited in the premises of 
these various systems, and the not less strange uni- 
formity exhibited in their conclusions ? Why does 
not as great a divergence manifest itself in the 
results arrived at as we undoubtedly find in the 
methods employed ? How comes it that all these 
explorers reach the same goal, when their points of 
departure are so widely dispersed ? Plainly but one 
plausible method of solving the difficulty exists. 
The conclusions were in every case determined be- 
fore the argument began, the goal was in every case 
settled before the travellers set out. There is here 
no surrender of belief to the inward guidance of un- 
fettered reason. Rather is reason coerced to a fore- 
ordained issue by the external operation of prejudice 
and education, or by the rougher machinery of social 
ostracism and legal penalty. The framers of ethical 
systems are either philosophers who are unable to 



208 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

free themselves from the unfelt bondage of custom- 
ary opinion, or advocates who find it safer to exer- 
cise their liberty of speculation in respect to pre- 
mises about which nobody cares, than in respect to 
conclusions which might bring them into conflict 
with the police. 

So might we imagine the members of our eman- 
cipated community discussing the principles on 
which morality is founded. But, in truth, it were 
a vain task to work out in further detail the results 
of an experiment which, human nature being what 
it is, can never be seriously attempted. That it can 
never be seriously attempted is not, be it observed, 
because it is of so dangerous a character that the 
community in its wisdom would refuse to embark 
upon it. This would be a frail protection indeed. 
Not the danger of the adventure, but its impossi- 
bility, is our security. To reject all convictions 
which are not the products of free speculative in- 
vestigation is, fortunately, an exercise of which hu- 
manity is in the strictest sense incapable. Some 
societies and some individuals may show more incli- 
nation to indulge in it than others. But in no con- 
dition of society and in no individual will the incli- 
nation be more than very partially satisfied. Always 
and everywhere our Imaginary Observer, contem- 
plating from some external coign of vantage the 
course of human history, would note the immense, 
the inevitable, and on the whole the beneficent, part 
which Authority plays in the production of belief. 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 209 



II 



This truth finds expression, and at first sight we 
might feel inclined to say recognition also, in such 
familiar commonplaces as that every man is the 

* product of the society in which he lives,' and that 

* it is vain to expect him to rise much above the level 
of his age.' But aphorisms like these, however use- 
ful as aids to a correct historical perspective, do not, 
as ordinarily employed, show any real apprehension 
of the verity on which I desire to insist. They be- 
long to a theory which regards these social influ- 
ences as clogs and hindrances, hampering the free 
movements of those who might under happier cir- 
cumstances have struggled successfully towards the 
truth ; or as perturbing forces which drive mankind 
from the even orbit marked out for it by reason. 
Reason, according to this view, is a kind of Ormuzd 
doing constant battle against' the Ahriman of tradi- 
tion and authority. Its gradual triumph over the 
opposing powers of darkness is what we mean by 
Progress. Everything which shall hasten the hour 
of that triumph is a gain ; and if by some magic 
stroke we could extirpate, as it were in a moment, 
every cause of belief which was not also a reason, 
we should, it appears, be the fortunate authors of a 
reform in the moral world only to be paralleled by 
the abolition of pain and disease in the physical. I 
have already indicated some of the grounds which 



2IO AUTHORITY AND REASON 

induce me to form a very different estimate of the 
part which reason plays in human affairs. Our an- 
cestors, whose errors we palliate on account of their 
environment with a feeling of satisfaction, due partly 
to our keen appreciation of our own happier position 
and greater breadth of view, were not to be pitied 
because they reasoned little and believed much ; nor 
should we necessarily have any particular cause for 
self-gratulation if it were true that we reasoned 
more and, it may be, believed less. Not thus has 
the world been fashioned. But, nevertheless, this 
identification of reason with all that is good among 
the causes of belief, and authority with all that is 
bad, is a delusion so gross and yet so prevalent that 
a moment's examination into the exaggerations and 
confusions which lie at the root of it may not be 
thrown away. 

The first of these confusions may be dismissed 
almost in a sentence. It arises out of the tacit as- 
sumption that reason means right reason. Such an 
assumption, it need hardly be said, begs half the 
point at issue. Reason, for purposes of this discus- 
sion, can no more be made to mean right reason than 
authority can be made to mean legitimate authority. 
True, we might accept the first of these definitions, 
and yet deny that all right belief was the fruit of 
reason. But we could hardly deny the converse 
proposition, that reason thus defined must always 
issue in right belief. Nor need we be concerned to 
deny a statement at once so obvious and so barren. 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 211 

The source of error which has next to be noted 
presents points of much greater interest. Though it 
be true, as I am contending, that the importance of 
reason among the causes which produce and main- 
tain the beliefs, customs, and ideals which form the 
groundwork of life has been much exaggerated, 
there can yet be no doubt that reason is, or appears 
to be, the cause over which we have the most direct 
control, or rather the one which we most readily 
identify with our own free and personal action. We 
are acted on by authority. It moulds our ways of 
thought in spite of ourselves, and usually unknown 
to ourselves. But when we reason we are the au- 
thors of the effect produced. We have ourselves 
set the machine in motion. For its proper working 
we are ourselves immediately responsible ; so that it 
is both natural and desirable that we should concen- 
trate our attention on this particular class of causes, 
even though we should thus be led unduly to 
magnify their importance in the general scheme of 
things. 

I have somewhere seen it stated that the steam- 
engine in its primitive form required a boy to work 
the valve by which steam was admitted to the 
cylinder. It was his business at the proper period 
of each stroke to perform this necessary operation 
by pulling a string ; and though the same object 
has long since been attained by mechanical methods 
far simpler and more trustworthy, yet I have little 
doubt that until the advent of that revolutionary 



212 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

youth who so tied the string to one of the moving 
parts of the engine that his personal supervision was 
no longer necessary, the boy in office greatly magni- 
fied his functions, and regarded himself with par- 
donable pride as the most important, because the 
only rational, link in the chain of causes and effects 
by which the energy developed in the furnace was 
ultimately converted into the motion of the fly- 
wheel. So do we stand as reasoning beings in the 
presence of the complex processes, physiological 
and psychical, out of which are manufactured the 
convictions necessary to the conduct of life. To the 
results attained by their co-operation reason makes 
its slender contribution ; but in order that it may do 
so effectively, it is beneficently decreed that, pend- 
ing the evolution of some better device, reason 
should appear to the reasoner the most admirable 
and important contrivance in the whole mechanism. 
The manner in which attention and interest are 
thus unduly directed towards the operations, vital 
and social, which are under our direct control, 
rather than those which we are unable to modify, or 
can only modify by a very indirect and circuitous 
procedure, may be illustrated by countless exam- 
ples. Take one from physiology. Of all the com- 
plex causes which co-operate for the healthy nour- 
ishment of the body, no doubt the conscious choice 
of the most wholesome rather than the less whole- 
some forms of ordinary food is far from being the 
least important. Yet, as it is within our immedi- 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 213 

ate competence, we attend to it, moralise about it. 
and generally make much of it. But no man can by 
taking thought directly regulate his digestive secre- 
tions. We never, therefore, think of them at all 
until they go wrong, and then, unfortunately, to 
very little purpose. So it is with the body politic. 
A certain proportion (probably a small one) of the 
changes and adaptations required by altered sur- 
roundings can only be effected through the solvent 
action of criticism and discussion. How such dis- 
cussion shall be conducted, what are the arguments 
on either side, how a decision shall be arrived at, 
and how it shall be carried out, are matters which 
we seem able to regulate by conscious effort and the 
deliberate adaptation of means to ends. We there- 
fore unduly magnify the part they play in the fur- 
therance of our interests. We perceive that they 
supply business to the practical politician, raw ma- 
terial to the political theorist ; and we forget amid 
the buzzing of debate the multitude of incom- 
parably more important processes, by whose unde- 
signed co-operation alone the life and growth of the 
State are rendered possible. 

Ill 

There is, however, a third source of illusion, re- 
specting the importance of reason in the actual con- 
duct of human affairs, which well deserves the atten- 
tive study of those who, like our Imaginary Observer, 
are interested in the purely external and scientific in- 



214 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

vestigation of the causes which produce belief. I 
have already in this chapter made reference to the 
* spirit of the age ' as one form in which authority most 
potently manifests itself ; and undoubtedly it is so. 
Dogmatic education in early years may do much.^ 
The immediate pressure of domestic, social, scientific, 
ecclesiastical surroundings in the direction of spe- 
cific beliefs may do even more. But the power of 
authority is never more subtle and effective than 
when it produces a psychological ' atmosphere ' or 
' climate * favourable to the life of certain modes of 
belief, unfavourable, and even fatal, to the life of 
others. Such ' climates ' may be widely diffused, or 
the reverse. Their range may cover a generation, 
an epoch, a whole civilisation, or it may be nar- 
rowed down to a sect, a family, even an individual. 
And as they may vary infinitely in respect to the 
extent of their influence, so also they may vary in 
respect to its intensity and quality. But whatever 
be their limits and whatever their character, their 
importance to the conduct of life, social and individ- 
ual, cannot easily be overstated. 

Consider, for instance, their effect on great 
classes of belief with which reasoning, were it only 
on account of their mass, is quite incompetent to 
deal. If all credible propositions, all propositions 
which somebody at some time had been able to be- 
lieve, were only to be rejected after their claims had 

^ I may again remind the reader that the word * dogmatic ' as 
used in these Notes has no special theological reference. 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 21 5 

been impartially tested by a strictly logical inves- 
tigation, the intellectual machine would be over- 
burdened, and its movements hopelessly choked by 
mere excess of material. Even such products as it 
could turn out would, as I conjecture (for the ex- 
periment has never been tried), prove but a mot- 
ley collection, so diverse in design, so incongruous 
and ill-assorted, that they could scarcely contribute 
the fitting furniture of a well-ordered mind. What 
actually happens in the vast majority of cases is 
something very different. To begin with, external 
circumstances, mere conditions of time and place, 
limit the number of opinions about which anything 
is known, and on which, therefore, it is (so to speak) 
materially possible that reason can be called upon 
to pronounce a judgment. But there are internal 
limitations not less universal and not less necessary. 
Few indeed are the beliefs, even among those which 
come under his observation, which any individual 
for a moment thinks himself called upon seriously 
to consider with a view to their possible adoption. 
The residue he summarily disposes of, rejects with- 
out a hearing, or, rather, treats as if they had not 
even that prima facie claim to be adjudicated on 
which formal rejection seems to imply. 

Now, can this process be described as a rational 
one ? That it is not the immediate result of reason- 
ing is, I think, evident enough. All would admit, 
for example, that when the mind is closed against 
the reception of any truth by ' bigotry ' or ' inveterate 



2l6 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

prejudice,' the effectual cause of the victory of error 
is not so much bad reasoning as something which, 
in its essential nature, is not reasoning at all. But 
there is really no ground for drawing a distinction 
as regards their mode of operation between the ^ 
' psychological climates ' which we happen to like and 
those of which we happen to disapprove. However 
various their character, all, I take it, work out their 
results very much in the same kind of way. For 
good or for evil, in ancient times and in modern, 
among savage folk and among civilised, it is ever by 
an identic process that they have sifted and selected 
the candidates for credence, on which reason has 
been afterwards called upon to pass judgment ; and 
that process is one with which ratiocination has little 
or nothing directly to do. 

But though these ' psychological climates ' do not 
work through reasoning, may they not themselves, 
in many cases, be the products of reasoning? May 
they not, therefore, be causes of belief which belong, 
though it be only at the second remove, to the domain 
of reason rather than to that of authority ? To the 
first of these questions the answer must doubtless be 
in the affirmative. Reasoning has unquestionably a 
great deal to do with the production of psychological 
climates. As ' climates ' are among the causes which 
produce beliefs, so are beliefs among the causes 
which produce * climates,' and all reasoning, therefore, 
which culminates in belief may be, and indeed must 
be, at least indirectly concerned in the effects which 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 21/ 

belief develops. But are these results rational ? Do 
they follow, I mean, on reason qua reason ; or are 
they, like a schoolboy's tears over a proposition of 
Euclid, consequences of reasoning, but not conclu- 
sions from it ? 

In order to answer this question it may be worth 
while to consider it in the light of an example which 
I have already used in another connection and under 
a different aspect. It will be recollected that in a 
preceding chapter I considered Rationalism, not as 
a psychological climate, a well-characterised mood of 
mind, but as an explicit principle of judgment, in 
which the rationalising temper may for purposes of 
argument find definite expression. To Rationalism 
in the first of these senses — to Rationalism, in other 
words, considered as a form of Authority — I now 
revert ; taking it as an incident specially suited to 
our purpose, not only because its meaning is well 
understood, but because it is found at our own level 
of intellectual development, and we can therefore 
study its origin and character with a kind of insight 
quite impossible when we are dealing with the 
* climates ' which govern in so singular a fashion the 
beliefs of primitive races. These, too, may be, and I 
suppose are, to some extent, the products of reason- 
ing. But the reasoning appears to us as arbitrary 
as the resulting ' climates * are repugnant ; and 
though we can note and classify the facts, we can 
hardly comprehend them with sympathetic under- 
standing. 



2l8 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

With Rationalism it is different. How the dis- 
coveries of science, the growth of criticism, and the 
diffusion of learning should have fostered the ration- 
alising temper seems intelligible to all, because all, 
in their different degrees, have been subject to these 
very influences. Not everyone is a rationalist ; but 
everyone, educated or uneducated, is prepared to 
reject without further examination certain kinds of 
statement which, before the rationalising era set in, 
would have been accepted without difficulty by the 
wisest among mankind. 

Now this modern mood, whether in its qualified 
or unqualified (i.e. naturalistic) form, is plainly no 
mere product of non-rational conditions, as the enu- 
meration I have just given of its most conspicuous 
causes is sufficient to prove. Natural science and 
historical criticism have not been built up without a 
vast expenditure of reasoning, and (though for present 
purposes this is immaterial) very good reasoning, 
too. But are we on that account to say that the 
results of the rationalising temper are ths work of 
reason? Surely not. The rationalist rejects miracles; 
and if you force him to a discussion, he may no doubt 
produce from the ample stores of past controversy 
plenty of argument in support of his belief. But do 
not therefore assume that his belief is the result of 
his argument. The odds are strongly in favour of 
argument and belief having both grown up under 
the fostering influence of his ' psychological climate.' 
For observe that precisely in the way in which he 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 219 

rejects miracles he also rejects witchcraft. Here 
there has been no controversy worth mentioning. 
The general belief in witchcraft has died a natural 
death, and it has not been worth anybody's while to 
devise arguments against it. Perhaps there are none. 
But, whether there be or not, no logical axe was re- 
quired to cut down a plant which had not the least 
chance of flourishing in a mental atmosphere so rig- 
orous and uncongenial as that of rationalism ; and 
accordingly no logical axe has been provided. 

The belief in mesmerism, however, supplies in 
some ways a more instructive case than the belief 
either in miracles or witchcraft. Like these, it 
found in rationalism a hostile influence. But, unlike 
these, it could call in almost at will the assistance 
of what would now be regarded as ocular demon- 
stration. For two generations, however, this was 
found insufficient. For two generations the rational- 
istic bias proved sufficiently strong to pervert the 
judgment of the most distinguished observers, and 
to incapacitate them from accepting what under 
more favourable circumstances they would have 
called the ' plain evidence of their senses.' So that 
we are here presented with the curious spectacle of 
an intellectual mood or temper, whose origin was 
largely due to the growth of the experimental 
sciences, making it impossible for those affected to 
draw the simplest inference, even from the most 
conclusive experiments. 

This is an interesting case of the conflict be- 



220 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

tween authorit}^ and reason, because it illustrates the 
general truth for which I have been contending, with 
an emphasis that would be impossible if we took as our 
example some worn-out vesture of thought, thread- 
bare from use, and strange to eyes accustomed to 
newer fashions. Rationalism, in its turn, may be pre- 
destined to suffer a like decay ; but in the meanwhile 
it forcibly exemplifies the part played by authority in 
the formation of beliefs. If rationalism be regarded 
as a non-rational effect of reason and a non-rational 
cause of belief, the same admission will readily be 
made about all other intellectual climates ; and that 
rationalism should be so regarded is now, I trust, plain 
to the reader. The only results which reason can 
claim as hers by an exclusive title are of the nature of 
logical conclusions ; and rationalism, in the sense in 
which I am now using the word, is not a logical con- 
clusion, but an intellectual temper. The only instru- 
ments which reason, as such, can employ are argu- 
ments; and rationalism is not an argument, but an 
impulse towards belief, or disbelief. So that, though 
rationalism, like other ' psychological climates,' is 
doubtless due, among other causes, to reason, it is not 
on that account a rational product ; and though in its 
turn it produces beliefs, it is not on that account a 
rational cause. 

From the preceding considerations it may, I think, 
be fairly concluded, firstly, that reason is not neces- 
sarily, nor perhaps usually, dominant among the im 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 221 

mediate causes which produce a particular * psycho- 
logical climate.' Secondl}^ that the efficiency of such 
a ' climate ' in promoting or destroying beliefs is quite 
independent of the degree to which reason has con- 
tributed to its production ; and, thirdly, that however 
much the existence of the 'climate* may be due to 
reason, its action on beliefs, be it favourable or hostile, 
is in its essential nature wholly non-rational. 



IV 

The most important source of error on this sub- 
ject remains, however, to be dealt with ; and it arises 
directly out of that jurisdiction which in matters of 
belief we can hardly do otherwise than recognise as 
belonging to Reason by a natural and indefeasible 
title. No one finds (if my observations in this matter 
are correct) any serious difficulty in attributing the 
origin of other people's beliefs, especially if he disa- 
agree with them, to causes which are not reasons. 
That interior assent should be produced in countless 
cases by custom, education, public opinion, the con- 
tagious convictions of countrymen, family, party, or 
Church, seems natural, and even obvious. That but 
a small number, at least of the most important and 
fundamental beliefs, are held by persons who could 
give reasons for them, and that of this small number 
only an inconsiderable fraction are held in conse- 
quence of the reasons by which they are nominally 



222 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

supported, may perhaps be admitted with no very 
great difficulty. But it is harder to recognise that 
this law is not merely, on the whole, beneficial, but 
that without it the business of the world could not 
possibly be carried on ; nor do we allow, without 
reluctance and a sense of shortcoming, that in our 
own persons we supply illustrations of its operation 
quite as striking as any presented to us by the rest 
of the world. 

Now this reluctance is not the result of vanity, 
nor of any fancied immunity from weaknesses com- 
mon to the rest of mankind. It is, rather, a direct 
consequence of the view we find ourselves compelled 
to take of the essential character of reason and of 
our relations to it. Looked at from the outside, as 
on-e among the complex conditions which produce 
belief, reason appears relatively insignificant and 
ineffectual ; not only appears so, but must be so, if" 
human society is to be made possible. Looked at 
from the inside, it claims by an inalienable title to be 
supreme. Measured by its results it may be little; 
measured by its rights it is everything. There is no 
problem it may not investigate, no belief which it 
may not assail, no principle which it may not test. 
It cannot, even by its own voluntary act, deprive it- 
self of universal jurisdiction, as, according to a once 
fashionable theory, primitive man, on entering the 
social state, contracted himself out of his natural 
rights and liberties. On the contrary, though its 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 223 

claims may be ignored, they cannot be repudiated ; 
and even those who shrink from the criticism of 
dogma as a sin, would probably admit that they do 
so because it is an act forbidden by those they are 
bound to obey ; do so, that is to say, nominally at 
least, for a reason which, at any moment, if it should 
think fit, reason itself may reverse. 

Why, under these circumstances, we are moved 
to regard ourselves as free intelligences, forming 
our opinions solely in obedience to reason ; why we 
come to regard reason itself, not only as the sole 
legitimate source of belief — which, perhaps, it may 
be — but the sole source of legitimate beliefs — which 
it assuredly is not, must now, I hope, be tolerably 
obvious, and needs not to be further emphasised. 
It is more instructive for our present purpose to 
consider for a moment certain consequences of this 
antinomy between the equities of Reason and the 
expediencies of Authority which rise into promi- 
nence whenever, under the changing conditions of 
society, the forces of the latter are being diverted 
into new and unaccustomed channels. 

It is true, no doubt, that the full extent and diffi- 
culty of the problems involved have not commonly 
been realised by the advocates either of authority 
or reason, though each has usually had a sufficient 
sense of the strength of the other's position to induce 
him to borrow from it, even at the cost of some little 
inconsistency. The supporter of authority, for in- 



224 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

stance, may point out some of the more obvious evils 
by which any decrease in its influence is usually ac- 
companied: the comminution of sects, the divisions 
of opinion, the weakened powers of co-operation, the 
increase of strife, the waste of power. Yet, so far as 
I am aware, no nation, party, or Church has ever 
courted controversial disaster by admitting that, if 
its claims were impartially tried at the bar of Reason, 
the verdict would go against it. In the same way, 
those who have most clamorously upheld the pre- 
rogatives of individual reason have always been 
forced to recognise by their practice, if not by their 
theory, that the right of every man to judge on every 
question for himself is like the right of every man 
who possesses a balance at his bankers to require its 
immediate payment in sovereigns. The right may 
be undoubted; but it can only be safely enjoyed on 
condition that too many persons do not take it into 
their heads to exercise it together. Perhaps, how- 
ever, the most striking evidence, both of the powers 
of authority and the rights of reason, may be found 
in the fact already alluded to, that beliefs which are 
really the offspring of the first, when challenged, in- 
variably claim to trace their descent from the second, 
although this improvised pedigree may be as imagi- 
nary as if it were the work of a college of heralds. 
To be sure, when this contrivance has served its 
purpose it is usually laid silently aside, while the 
belief it was intended to support remains quietly in 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 22$ 

possession, until, in the course of time, some other, 
and perhaps not less illusory, title has to be devised 
to rebut the pleas of a new claimant. 

If the reader desires an illustration of this pro- 
cedure, here is one taken at random from English 
political history. Among the results of the move- 
ment which culminated in the Great Rebellion was 
ot necessity a marked diminution in the universality 
and efficacy of that mixture of feelings and beliefs 
which constitutes loyalty to national government. 
Now loyalty, in some shape or other, is necessary for 
the stability of any form ot polity. It is one of the 
most valuable products of authority, and, whether 
in any particular case conformable to reason or 
not, is essentially unreasoning. Its theoretical basis 
therefore excites but little interest, and is of very sub- 
ordinate importance so long as it controls the hearts 
of men with undisputed sway. But as soon as its su- 
premacy is challenged, men begin to cast about anx- 
iously for reasons why it should continue to be obeyed. 

Thus, to those who lived through the troubles 
which preceded and accompanied the Great Rebel- 
lion, it became suddenly apparent that it was above 
all things necessary to bolster up by argument the 
creed which authority had been found temporarily 
insufficient to sustain; and of the arguments thus 
called into existence two, both of extraordinary ab- 
surdity, have become historically famous — that con- 
tained in Hobbes's ' Leviathan,' and that taught for a 



226 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

period with much vigour by the Anglican clergy 
under the name of Divine right. These theories 
may have done their work ; in any case they had 
their day. It was discovered that, as is the way of 
abstract arguments dragged in to meet a concrete 
difficulty, they led logically to a great many conclu- 
sions much less convenient than the one in whose 
defence they had been originally invoked. The 
crisis which called them forth passed gradually 
away. They were repugnant to the taste of a dif- 
ferent age ; * Leviathan ' and ' passive obedience ' 
were handed over to the judgment of the historian. 

This is an example of how an ancient principle, 
broadly based though it be on the needs and feelings 
of human nature, may be thought now and again to 
require external support to enable it to meet some 
special stress of circumstances. But often the stress 
is found to be brief ; a few internal alterations meet 
all the necessities of the case ; to a new generation the 
added buttresses seem useless and unsightly. They 
are soon demolished, to make way in due time, no 
doubt, for others as temporary as themselves. Noth- 
ing so quickly waxes old as apologetics, unless, per- 
haps, it be criticism. 

A precisely analogous process commonly goes 
on in the case of new principles struggling into rec- 
ognition. As those of older growth are driven by 
the instincts of self-preservation to call reasoning to 
their assistance, so these claim the aid of the same 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 22/ 

ally for purposes of attack and aggression ; and the 
incongruity between the causes by which beliefs are 
sustained, and the official reasons by which they are 
from time to time justified, is usually as glaring in 
the case of the last novelty in doctrine as in that of 
some long descended and venerable prejudice. Wit- 
ness the ostentatious futility of the theories — ' rights 
of man,' and so forth — by the aid of which the modern 
democratic movement was nursed through its infant 
maladies. 

Now these things are true, not alone in politics, 
but in every field of human activity where authority 
and reason co-operate to serve the needs of mankind 
at large. And thus may we account for the singular 
fact that in many cases conclusions are more perma- 
nent than premises, and that the successive growths 
of apologetic and critical literature do often not more 
seriously affect the enduring outline of the beliefs 
by which they are occasioned than the successive 
forests of beech and fir determine the shape of the 
everlasting hills from which they spring. 



Here, perhaps, I might fitly conclude this por- 
tion of my task, were it not that one particular mode 
in which Authority endeavours to call in reasoning 
to its assistance is so important in itself, and has led 
to so much confusion both of thought and of Ian- 



228 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

guage, that a few paragraphs devoted to its consid- 
eration may help the reader^ /a clearer understand- 
ing of the general subject. Authority, as I have 
been using the term, is in all cases contrasted with 
Reason, and stands for that group of non-rational 
causes, moral, social, and educational, which pro- 
duces its results by psychic processes other than 
reasoning. But there is a simple operation, a mere 
turn of phrase, by which many of these non-rational 
causes can, so to speak, be converted into reasons 
without seeming at first sight thereby to change 
their function as channels of Authority ; and so con- 
venient is this method of bringing these two sources 
of conviction on to the same plane, so perfectly does 
it minister to our instinctive desire to produce a 
reason for every challenged belief, that it is con- 
stantly resorted to (without apparently any clear 
idea of its real import), both by those who re- 
gard themselves as upholders and those who regard 
themselves as opponents of Authority in matters of 
opinion. To say that I believe a statement because 
I have been taught it, or because my father believed 
it before me, or because everybody in the village 
believes it, is to announce what everyday experi- 
ence informs us is a quite adequate cause of belief — 
it is not, however, per se, to give a reason for belief 
at all. But such statements can be turned at once 
into reasons by no process more elaborate than that 
of explicitly recognising that my teachers, my family, 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 229 

or my neighbours, are truthful persons, happy in the 
possession of adequate means of information — propo- 
sitions which in their turn, of course, require argu- 
mentative support. Such a procedure may, I need 
hardly say, be quite legitimate ; and reasons of this 
kind are probably the principal ground on which in 
mature life we accept the great mass of our sub- 
ordinate scientific and historical convictions. I be- 
lieve, for instance, that the moon falls in towards the 
earth with the exact velocity required by the force of 
gravitation, for no other reason than that I believe in 
the competence and trustworthiness of the persons 
who have made the necessary calculations. In this 
case the reason for my belief and the immediate 
cause of it are identical ; the cause, indeed, is a cause 
only in virtue of its being first a reason. But in the 
former case this is not so. Mere early training, 
paternal authority, or public opinion, were causes 
of belief before they were reasons ; they continued 
to act as non-rational causes after they became rea- 
sons ; and it is not improbable that to the very end 
they contributed less to the resultant conviction in 
their capacity as reasons than they did in their 
capacity as non-rational causes. 

Now the temptation thus to convert causes into 
reasons seems under certain circumstances to be 
almost irresistible, even when it is illegitimate. Au- 
thority, as such, is from the nature of the case dumb 
in the presence of argument. It is only by reasoning 



230 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

that reasoning can be answered. It can be, and has 
often been, thrust silently aside by that instinctive 
feeling of repulsion which we call prejudice when 
we happen to disagree with it. But it can only be 
replied to by its own kind. And so it comes about- 
that whenever any system of belief is seriously ques- 
tioned, a method of defence which is almost certain 
to find favour is to select one of the causes by which 
the belief has been produced, and forthwith to erect 
it into a reason why the system should continue to 
be accepted. Authority, as I have been using the 
term, is thus converted into * an authority,' or into 
* authorities.' It ceases to be the opposite or cor- 
relative of reason. It can no longer be contrasted 
with reason. It becomes a species of reason, and as 
a species of reason it must be judged. 

So judged, it appears to me that two things per- 
tinent to the present discussion may be said of it. 
In the first place, it is evidently an argument of im- 
mense utility and of very wide application. As I 
have just noted, it is the proximate reason for an 
enormous proportion of our beliefs as to matters of 
fact, past and present, and for that very large body 
of scientific knowledge which even experts in science 
can have no opportunity of personally verifying. 
But, in the second place, it seems not less clear that 
the argument from 'an authority' or 'authorities' 
is almost always useless as ?i foiuidation for a system 
of belief. The deep-lying principles which alone 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 23 1 

deserve this name may be, and frequently are, the 
product of authority. But the attempt to ground 
them dialectically upon an authority can scarcely be 
attempted, except at the risk of logical disaster. 

* Take as an example the general system of our 
beliefs about the material universe. The greater 
number of these are, as Ave have seen, quite legiti- 
mately based upon the argument from ' authorities * ; 
not so those few which lie at the root of the system. 
These also are largely due to Authority. But they 
cannot be rationally derived from 'authorities'; 
though the attempt so to derive them is almost cer- 
tain to be made. The ' universal experience,' or the 
* general consent of mankind,' will be adduced as an 
authoritative sanction of certain fundamental pre- 
suppositions of physical science ; and of these, at 
least, it will be said, securus judicat or bis t err arum. 
But a very little consideration is sufficient to show 
that this procedure is illegitimate, and that, as I have 
pointed out, we can neither know that the verdict 
of mankind has been given, nor, if it has, that any- 
thing can properly be inferred from it, unless we first 
assume the truth of the very principles which that 
verdict was invoked to establish.^ 

The state of things is not materially different 
in the case of ethics and theology. There also the 
argument from ' an authority ' or * authorities ' has 

^ Cf. for a development of this statement, Philosophic Doubt, 
chap. vii. 



232 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

a legitimate and most important place ; there also 
there is a constant inclination to extend the use of 
the argument so as to cover the fundamental portions 
of the system ; and there also this endeavour, when 
made, seems predestined to end in a piece of circular 
reasoning. I can hardly illustrate this statement 
without mentioning dogma ; though, as the reader 
will readily understand, I have not the slightest de- 
sire to do anything so little relevant to the purposes 
of this Introduction in order to argue either for or 
against it. As to the reality of an infallible guide, 
in whatever shape this has been accepted by various 
sections of Christians, I have not a word to say. As 
part of a creed it is quite outside the scope of my 
inquiry. I have to do with it only if, and in so far 
as, it is represented, not as part of the thing to be 
believed, but as one of the fundamental reasons for 
believing it; and in that position I think it inad- 
missiblCo 

Merely as an illustration, then, let us consider for 
a moment the particular case of Papal Infallibility, 
an example which may be regarded with the greater 
impartiality as I am not, I suppose, likely to have 
among the readers of these Notes many by whom it 
is accepted. If I rightly understand the teaching of 
the Roman Catholic theologians upon this subject, 
the following propositions, at least, must be accepted 
before the doctrine of Infallibility can be regarded as 
satisfactorily proved or adequately held : — (i) That 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 233 

the words ' Thou art Peter, and upon this rock,' &c., 
and, again, ' Feed m}^ sheep,' were uttered by Christ; 
and that, being so uttered, were of Divine authorship, 
and cannot fail. (2) That the meaning of these words 
is — (a) that St. Peter was endowed with a primacy 
of jurisdiction over the other Apostles; (d) that he 
was to have a perpetual line of successors, similarly 
endowed with a primacy of jurisdiction ; (c) that 
these successors were to be Bishops of Rome; (d) 
that the primacy of jurisdiction carries with it the 
certainty of Divine ' assistance ' ; (e) that though this 
' assistance ' does not ensure either the morality, or, 
the wisdom, or the general accuracy of the Pontiff 
to whom it is given, it does ensure his absolute 
inerrancy whenever he shall, ex cathedra, define a 
doctrine of faith or morals ; (/) that no pronounce- 
ment can be regarded as ex cathedrd unless it relates 
to some matter already thoroughly sifted and con- 
sidered by competent divines. 

Now it is no part of my business to ask how the 
six sub-heads constituting the second of these con- 
tentions can by any legitimate process of exegesis be 
extracted from the texts mentioned in the first; nor 
how, if they be accepted to the full, they can obviate 
the necessity for the complicated exercise of private 
judgment required to determine whether any particu- 
lar decision has or has not been made under the con- 
ditions necessary to constitute it a pronouncement 
ex cathedrd. These are questions to be discussed 



234 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

between Roman Catholic and non-Roman Catholic 
controversialists, and with them I have nothing here 
to do. My point is, that the first proposition alone 
is so absolutely subversive of any purely naturalistic 
view of the universe, involves so many fundamental 
elements of Christianity {e.g. the supernatural char- 
acter of Christ and the trustworthiness of the first 
and fourth Gospels, with all that this carries with 
it), that if it does not require the argument from an 
infallible authority for its support, it seems hard to 
understand where the necessity for that argument 
can come in at any fundamental stage of apologetic 
demonstration. And that this proposition does not 
require infallible authority for its support seems 
plain from the fact that it does itself supply the main 
ground on which the existence of infallible authority 
is believed. 

This is not, and is not intended to be, an objec- 
tion to the doctrine of Papal Infallibility ; it is not, 
and is not intended to be, a criticism by means of 
example directed against other doctrines involving 
the existence of an unerring guide. But if the reader 
will attentively consider the matter he will, I think, 
see that whatever be the truth or the value of such 
doctrines, they can never be used to supply any 
fundamental support to the systems of which they 
form a part without being open to a reply like that 
which I have supposed in the case of Papal Infalli- 
bility. Indeed, when we reflect upon the character 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 235 

of the religious books and of the religious organisa- 
tions through which Christianity has been built up ; 
when we consider the variety in date, in occasion, 
in authorship, in context, in spiritual development, 
which mark the first ; the stormy history and the in- 
evitable division which mark the second ; when we, 
further, reflect on the astonishing number of the 
problems, linguistic, critical, metaphysical, and his- 
torical, which must be settled, at least in some pre- 
liminary fashion, before either the books or the or- 
ganisations can be supposed entitled by right of 
rational proof to the position of infallible guides, we 
can hardly suppose that we were intended to find in 
these the logical foundations of our system of reli- 
gious beliefs, however important be the part (and 
can it be exaggerated?) which they were destined 
to play in producing, fostering, and directing it. 



VI 

Enough has now, perhaps, been said to indicate 
the relative positions of Reason and Authority in the 
production of belief. To Reason is largely due the 
growth of new and the sifting of old knowledge ; 
the ordering, and in part the discovery, of that vast 
body of systematised conclusions which constitute 
so large a portion of scientific, philosophical, ethical, 
political, and theological learning. To Reason we 
are in some measure beholden, though not, perhaps, 



236 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

SO much as we suppose, for hourly aid in managing 
so much of the trifling portion of our personal af- 
fairs entrusted to our care by Nature as we do not 
happen to have already surrendered to the control 
of habit. By Reason also is directed, or misdirected, 
the public policy of communities within the nar- 
row limits of deviation permitted by accepted cus- 
tom and tradition. Of its immense indirect conse- 
quences, of the part it has played in the evolution 
of human affairs by the disintegration of ancient 
creeds, by the alteration of the external conditions 
of human life, by the production of new moods of 
thought, or, as I have termed them, psychological 
climates, we can in this connection say nothing. 
For these are no rational effects of reason; the 
causal nexus by which they are bound to reason has 
no logical aspect; and if reason produces them, as 
in part it certainly does, it is in a manner indistin- 
guishable from that in which similar consequences 
are blindly produced by the distribution of conti- 
nent and ocean, the varying fertility of different re- 
gions, and the other material surroundings by which 
the destinies of the race are modified. 

When we turn, however, from the conscious 
work of Reason to that which is unconsciously per- 
formed for us by Authority, a very different spec- 
tacle arrests our attention. The effects of the first, 
prominent as they are through the dignity of their 
origin, are trifling compared with the all-pervading 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 237 

influences which flow from the second. At every 
moment of our lives, as individuals, as members of 
a family, of a party, of a nation, of a Church, of a 
universal brotherhood, the silent, continuous, unno- 
ticed influence of Authority moulds our feelings, our 
aspirations, and, what we are more immediately con- 
cerned with, our beliefs. It is from Authority that 
Reason itself draws its most important premises. It 
is in unloosing or directing the forces of Authority 
that its most important conclusions find their prin- 
cipal function. And even in those cases where we 
may most truly say that our beliefs are the rational 
product of strictly intellectual processes, w^e have, 
in all probability, only got to trace back the thread 
of our inferences to its beginnings in order to per- 
ceive that it finally loses itself in some general prin- 
ciple which, describe it as we may, is in fact due 
to no more defensible origin than the influence of 
x\uthority. 

Nor is the comparative pettiness of the role thus 
played by reasoning in human affairs a matter for 
regret. Not merely because we are ignorant of the 
data required for the solution, even of very simple 
problems in organic and social life, are we called on 
to acquiesce in an arrangement which, to be sure, 
we have no power to disturb ; nor yet because these 
data, did we possess them, are too complex to be 
dealt with by any rational calculus we possess or are 
ever likely to acquire ; but because, in addition to 



238 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

these difficulties, reasoning is a force most apt to di- 
vide and disintegrate ; and though division and dis- 
integration may often be the necessary preliminaries 
of social development, still more necessary are the 
forces which bind and stiffen, without which there 
would be no society to develop. 

It is true, no doubt, that we can, without any 
great expenditure of research, accumulate instances 
in which Authority has perpetuated error and re- 
tarded progress ; for, unluckily, none of the influ- 
ences, Reason least of all, by which the history of 
the race has been moulded have been productive of 
unmixed good. The springs at which we quench 
our thirst are always turbid. Yet, if we are to 
judge with equity between these rival claimants, we 
must not forget that it is Authority rather than 
Reason to which, in the main, we owe, not religion 
only, but ethics and politics ; that it is Authority 
which supplies us with essential elements in the 
premises of science ; that it is Authority rather than 
Reason which lays deep the foundations of social 
life ; that it is Authority rather than Reason which 
cements its superstructure. And though it may 
seem to savour of paradox, it is yet no exaggeration 
to say, that if we would find the quality in which 
we most notably excel the brute creation, we should 
look for it, not so much in our faculty of convincing 
and being convinced by the exercise of reasoning, as 



AUTHORITY AND REASON 239 

in our capacity for influencing and being influenced 
through the action of Authority. 



[NOTE 

ON THE USE OF THE WORDS * AUTHORITY ' AND ' REASON ' 

Much criticism has been directed against the use to which the 
word ' Authority ' has been put in this chapter. And there can be 
no doubt that a terminology which draws so sharp a distinction 
between phrases so nearly identical as ' authority ' and ' an author- 
ity ' must be open to objection. 

Yet it still seems to me difficult to find a more suitable expres- 
sion. There is no word in the English language which describes 
what I want to describe, and yet describes nothing else. Every 
alternative term seems at least as much open to misconception as 
the one I have employed, and I do not observe that those who have 
most severely criticised it, have suggested an unobjectionable sub- 
stitute. Professor Pringle Pattison (Seth) in a most interesting and 
sympathetic review of this work,^ goes the length of saying that my 
use of the word is a * complete departure from ordinary usage.' ' 
But I can hardly think that this is so. However else the word may 
be employed in common parlance, it is surely often employed ex- 
actly as it is in this chapter — namely, to describe those causes of 
belief which are not reasons and yet are due to the influence of 
mind on mind. Parental influence is typical of the species : and it 
would certainly be in conformity with accepted usage to describe 
this as ' Authority. ' A child does not accept its mother's teaching 
because it regards its mother as ' an authority ' whom it is reason- 
able to believe. The process is one of non-rational (not /rrational) 
causation. Again I do not think it would be regarded as forced to 
talk of the ' authority of public opinion ' or the ' authority of cus- 
tom ' exactly with the meaning which such expression would bear 
in the preceding chapter. ' He submitted to the authority of- a 

^ Since republished in Man's Place in the Cosmos. 
' Op. cit. p. 265. 



240 AUTHORITY AND REASON 

stronger will.' * He never asked on what basis the claims of his 
Church rested ; he simply bowed, as from his childhood he had 
always bowed, to her unchallenged authority.' ' No doubts were 
ever entertained, no inconvenient questions were ever asked, about 
the propriety of a practice which was enforced by the authority of 
unbroken custom.' I think it will be admitted that in all these ex- 
amples the word • authority ' is used in the sense I have attributed 
to it, that this sense is a natural sense, and that no other single word 
could advantageously be substituted for it. If so, the reasons for 
its employment seem not inadequate. 

I feel on even stronger ground in replying to the criticisms 
passed on my use here of the word ' reason. ' Professor Pattison, 
though he does not like it, admits that it is in accordance with the 
practice of the older English thinkers. I submit that it is also in 
accordance with the usage prevalent in ordinary discourse. But I 
go further and say that I am employing the word in the sense in 
which it is always employed when ' reason ' is contrasted with * au- 
thority.' If a man boasts that all his opinions have been arrived at 
by ' following reason,' he is referring not to the Universal Reason 
or Logos, but to his own faculty of discursive reason: and what he 
wishes the world to understand is that his beliefs are based on rea- 
soning, not on authority or prejudice. Now this is the very indi- 
vidual whom I had in my mind when writing this chapter : and if I 
had been debarred from using the words * reason ' and ' reasoning ' 
in their ordinary everyday meaning, I really do not see in what lan- 
guage I could have addressed myself to him at all.] 



PART IV 

SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS 
A PROVISIONAL PHILOSOPHY 



CHAPTER I 

THE GROUNDWORK 



We have now considered beliefs, or certain impor- 
tant classes of them, under three aspects. We have 
considered them from the point of view of their 
practical necessity ; from that of their philosophic 
proof ; and from that of their scientific origin. In- 
quiries relating to the same subject-matter more 
distinct in their character it would be difficult to 
conceive. It remains for us to consider whether it 
is possible to extract from their combined results 
any general view which may command at least a 
provisional assent. 

It is evident, of course, that this general view, if 
we are fortunate enough to reach it, will not be of 
the nature of a complete or adequate philosophy. 
The unification of all belief into an ordered whole, 
compacted into one coherent structure under the 
stress of reason, is an ideal which we can never 
abandon ; but it is also one which, in the present 
condition of our knowledge, perhaps even of our 
faculties, we seem incapable of attaining. For the 



244 THE GROUNDWORK 

moment we must content ourselves with something 
less than this. The best system we can hope to 
construct will suffer from gaps and rents, from loose 
ends and ragged edges. It does not, however, fol- 
low from this that it will be without a high degree 
of value ; and, whether valuable or worthless, it may 
at least represent the best within our reach. 

By the best I, of course, mean best in relation to 
reflective reason. If we have to submit, as I think 
we must, to an incomplete rationalisation of belief, 
this ought not to be because in a fit of intellectual 
despair we are driven to treat reason as an illusion ; 
nor yet because we have deliberately resolved to 
transfer our allegiance to irrational or non-rational 
inclination ; but because reason itself assures us that 
such a course is, at the lowest, the least irrational 
one open to us. If we have to find our way over 
difficult seas and under murky skies without com- 
pass or chronometer, we need not on that account 
allow the ship to drive at random. Rather ought 
we to weigh with the more anxious care every in- 
dication, be it negative or positive, and from what- 
ever quarter it may come, which can help us to 
guess at our position and to lay out the course 
which it behoves us to steer. 

Now, the first and most elementary principle 
which ought to guide us in framing any provisional 
scheme of unification, is to decline to draw any dis- 
tinction between different classes of belief where no 
relevant distinction can as a matter of fact be dis- 



THE GROUNDWORK 245 

covered. To pursue the opposite course would be 
gratuitously to irrationalise (to coin a convenient 
word) our scheme from the very start ; to destroy, 
by a quite arbitrary treatment, any hope of its 
symmetrical and healthy development. And yet, 
if there be any value in the criticisms contained 
in the Second Part of these Notes, this is precisely 
the mistake into which the advocates of natural- 
ism have invariably blundered. Without any pre- 
liminary analysis, nay, without any apparent sus- 
picion that a preliminary analysis was necessary 
or desirable, they have chosen to assume that 
scientific beliefs stand not only upon a different, 
but upon a much more solid, platform than any 
others; that scientific standards supply the sole 
test of truth, and scientific methods the sole instru- 
ments of discovery. 

The reader is already in possession of some 
of the arguments which are, as it seems to me, 
fatal to such claims, and it is not necessary here 
to repeat them. What is more to our present 
purpose is to find out whether, in the absence of 
philosophic proof, judgments about the phenome- 
nal, and more particularly about the material, 
world possess any other characteristics which, in 
our attempt at a provisional unification of know- 
ledge, forbid us to place them on a level with other 
classes of belief. That there are differences of 
some sort no one, I imagine, will attempt to deny. 
But are they of a kind which require us either 



246 THE GROUNDWORK 

to give any special precedence to science, or to 
exclude other beliefs altogether from our general 
scheme ? 

One peculiarity there is which seems at first 
sight effectually to distinguish certain scientific be- 
liefs from any which belong, say, to ethics or the- 
ology ; a peculiarity which may, perhaps, be best 
expressed by the word ' inevitableness.' Every- 
body has, and everybody is obliged to have, some 
convictions about the world in which he lives — con- 
victions which in their narrow and particular form 
(as what I have before called beliefs of perception, 
memory, and expectation) guide us all, children, 
savages, and philosophers alike, in the ordinary 
conduct of day-to-day existence ; which, when gen- 
eralised and extended, supply us with some of the 
leading presuppositions on which the whole fabric 
of science appears logically to depend. No convic- 
tions quite answering to this description can, I think, 
be found either in ethics, aesthetics, or theology. 
Some kind of morality is, no doubt, required for the 
stability even of the rudest form of social life. Some 
sense of beauty, some kind of religion, is, perhaps, 
to be discovered (though this is disputed) in every 
human community. But certainly there is nothing 
in any of these great departments of thought quite 
corresponding to our habitual judgments about the 
things we see and handle; judgments which, with 
reason or without it, all mankind are practically 
compelled to entertain. 



THE GROUNDWORK 247 

Compare, for example, the central truth of theol- 
ogy — 'There is a God' — with one of the funda- 
mental presuppositions of science (itself a general- 
ised statement of what is given in ordinary judg- 
ments of perception) — * There is an independent 
material world.' I am myself disposed to doubt 
whether so good a case can be made out for accept- 
ing the second of these propositions as can be made 
out for accepting the first. But while it has been 
found by many, not only possible, but easy, to doubt 
the existence of God, doubts as to the independent 
existence of matter have assuredly been confined to 
the rarest moments of subjective reflection, and 
have dissolved like summer mists at the first touch 
of what we are pleased to call reality. 

Now, what are we to make of this fact ? In the 
opinion of many persons, perhaps of most, it affords 
a conclusive ground for elevating science to a dif- 
ferent plane of certitude from that on which other 
systems of belief must be content to dwell. The 
evidence of the senses, as we loosely describe these 
judgments of perception, is for such persons the best 
of all evidence : it is inevitable, so it is true ; seeing, 
as the proverb has it, is indeed believing. This 
somewhat crude view, however, is not one which 
Ave can accept. The coercion exercised in the pro- 
duction of these beliefs is not, as has been already 
shown, a rational coercion. Even while we submit 
to it we may judge it; and in the very act of be- 
lieving we may be conscious that the strength of 



248 THE GROUNDWORK 

our belief is far in excess of anything which mere 
reasoning can justify. 

I am making no complaint of this disparity be- 
tween belief and its reasons. On the contrary, I 
have already noted my dissent from the popular 
view that it is our business to take care that, as far 
as possible, these two shall in every case be nicely 
adjusted. It cannot, I contend, be our duty to do 
that in the name of reason which, if it were done, 
would bring any kind of rational life to an immedi- 
ate standstill. And even if we could suppose it to 
be our duty, it is not one which, as was shown in 
the last chapter, we are practically competent to 
perform. If this be true in the case of those be- 
liefs which owe their origin largely to Authority, 
or the non-rational action of mind on mind, not less 
is it true in the case of those elementary judgments 
which arise out of sense - stimulation. Whether 
there be an independent material universe or not 
may be open to philosophic doubt. But that, if it 
exists, it is expedient that the belief in it should be 
accepted with a credence which for all practical 
purposes is immediate and unwavering, admits, I 
think, of no doubt whatever. If we could suppose 
a community to be called into being who, in its 
dealings with the ' external world,' should permit 
action to wait upon speculation, and require all its 
metaphysical difficulties to be solved before repos- 
ing full belief in some such material surroundings 
as those which we habitually postulate, its members 



THE GROUNDWORK 249 

would be overwhelmed by a ruin more rapid and 
more complete than that which, in a preceding 
chapter, was prophesied for those who should suc- 
ceed in ousting authority from its natural position 
among the causes of belief. 

But supposing this be so, it follows necessarily, 
on accepted biological principles,^ that a kind of 
credulity so essential to the welfare, not merely of 
the race as a whole, but of every single member of 
it, will be bred by elimination and selection into 
its inmost organisation. If we consider what must 
have happened^ at that critical moment in the history 
of organic development when first conscious judg- 
ments of sense-perception made themselves felt as 
important links in the chain connecting nervous 
irritability with muscular action, is it not plain that 
any individual in whom such judgments were ha- 
bitually qualified and enfeebled by even the most le- 
gitimate scepticism would incontinently perish, and 
that those only would survive who possessed, and 
could presumably transmit to their descendants, a 
stubborn assurance which was beyond the power of 
reasoning either to fortify or to undermine ? 

No such process would come to the assistance of 

^ At the first glance, the reader may be disposed to think that to 
bring in science to show why no peculiar certainty should attach to 
scientific premises is logically inadmissible. But this is not so : 
though the converse procedure, by which scientific conclusions 
would be made to establish scientific premises, would, no doubt, 
involve an argument in a circle. 

2 Cf. Note, p. 285. 



250 THE GROUNDWORK 

other faiths, however true, which were the growth 
of higher and later stages of civilised development. 
For, in the first place, such faiths are not necessa- 
rily, nor perhaps at all, an advantage in the struggle 
for existence. In the second place, even where they 
are an 'advantage, it is rather to the community as a 
whole in its struggles with other communities, than 
to each particular individual in his struggle with 
other individuals, or with the inanimate forces of 
Nature. In the third place, the whole machinery of 
selection and elimination has been weakened, if not 
paralysed, by civilisation itself. And, in the fourth 
place, were it still in full operation, it could not, 
through the mere absence of time and opportunity, 
have produced any sensible effect in moulding the 
organism for the reception of beliefs which, by 
hypothesis, are the recent acquisition of a small and 
advanced minority. 



II 



We are now in a position to answer the question 
put a few pages back. What, I then asked, if any, 
is the import, from our present point of view, of the 
universality and inevitableness which unquestion- 
ably attach to certain judgments about the world of 
phenomena, and to these judgments alone? The 
answer must be, that these peculiarities have no 
import. They exist, but they are irrelevant. Faith 
or assurance, which, if not in excess of reason, is at 



THE GROUNDWORK 2$! 

least independent of it, seems to be a necessity in 
every great department of knowledge which touches 
on action ; and what great department is there 
which does not? The analysis of sense-experience 
teaches us that we require it in our ordinary deal- 
ings with the material world. The most cursory 
examination into the springs of moral action shows 
that it is an indispensable supplement to ethical 
speculation. Theologians are for the most part 
agreed that without it religion is but the ineffectual 
profession of a barren creed. The comparative 
value, however, of these faiths is not to be measured 
either by their intensity or by the degree of their 
diffusion. It is true that all men, whatever their 
speculative opinions, enjoy a practical assurance 
with regard to what they see and touch. It is also 
true that few men have an assurance equally strong 
about matters of which their senses tell them noth- 
ing immediately ; and that many men have on such 
subjects no assurance at all. But as this is precisely 
what we should expect if, in the progress of evolu- 
tion, the need for other faiths had arisen under con- 
ditions very different from those which produced 
our innate and long-descended confidence in sense- 
perception, how can we regard it as a distinction in 
favour of the latter? We can scarcely reckon uni- 
versality and necessity as badges of pre-eminence, 
at the same moment that we recognise them as 
marks of the elementary and primitive character of 
the beliefs to which they give their all-powerful, but 



252 THE GROUNDWORK 

none the less irrational, sanction. The time has 
passed for believing that the further we go back 
towards the * state of nature,' the nearer we get to 
Virtue and to Truth. 

We cannot, then, extract out of the coercive 
character of certain unreasoned beliefs any principle 
of classification which shall help us to the provi- 
sional philosophy of which we are in search. What 
such a principle would require us to include in our 
system of beliefs contents us not. What it would 
require us to exclude we may not willingly part 
with. And if, dissatisfied with this double defici- 
ency, we examine more closely into its character 
and origin, we find, not only that it is without 
rational justification — of which at this stage of our 
inquiry we have no right to complain — but that the 
very account which it gives of itself precludes us 
from finding in it even a temporary place of intel- 
lectual repose. 

I do not, be it observed, make it a matter of 
complaint that those who erect the inevitable judg- 
ments of sense-perception into a norm or standard 
of right belief have thereby substituted (however 
unconsciously) psychological compulsion for ra-. 
tional necessity ; for, as rational necessity does not, 
so far as I can see, carry us at the best beyond a 
system of mere ' solipsism,' it must, somehow or 
other, be supplemented if we are to force an en- 
trance into any larger and worthier inheritance. 
My complaint rather is, that having asked us to 



THE GROUNDWORK 253 

acquiesce in the guidance of non-rational impulse, 
they should then require us arbitrarily to narrow 
down the impulses which we may follow to the 
almost animal instincts lying at the root of our 
judgments about material phenomena. It is surely 
better — less repugnant, I mean, to reflective reason 
— to frame for ourselves some wider scheme which, 
though it be founded in the last resort upon our 
needs, shall at least take account of other needs than 
those we share with our brute progenitors. 

And here, if not elsewhere, I may claim the sup- 
port of the most famous masters of speculation. 
Though they have not, it may be, succeeded in sup- 
plying us with a satisfactory explanation of the Uni- 
verse, at least the Universe which they have sought 
to explain has been something more than a mere 
collection of hypostatised sense-perceptions, packed 
side by side in space, and following each other with 
blind uniformity in time. All the great architects 
of systems have striven to provide accommodation 
within their schemes for ideas of wider sweep and 
richer content ; and whether they desired to support, 
to modify, or to oppose the popular theology of 
their day, they have at least given hospitable wel- 
come to some of its most important conceptions. 

In the case of such men as Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, 
this is obvious enough. It is true, I think, even in 
such a case as that of Spinoza. Philosophers, in- 
deed, may find but small satisfaction in his methods 
or conclusions. They may see but little to admire 



254 THE GROUNDWORK 

in his elaborate but illusory show of quasi-mathe- 
matical demonstration ; in the Nature which is so 
unlike the Nature of the physicist that we feel no 
surprise at its being also called God; in the God 
Who is so unlike the God of the theologian that we 
feel no surprise at His also being called Nature ; in 
the a priori metaphysic which evolves the universe 
from definitions; in the freedom which is indistin- 
guishable from necessity ; in the volition which is 
indistinguishable from intellect; in the love which 
is indistinguishable from reasoned acquiescence ; 
in the universe from which have been expelled pur- 
pose, morality, beauty, and causation, and which 
contains, therefore, but scant room for theology, 
ethics, aesthetics, or science. In the two hundred 
years and more which have elapsed since the pub- 
lication of his system, it may be doubted whether 
two hundred persons have been convinced by his 
reasoning. Yet he continues to interest the world ; 
and why ? Not, surely, as a guide through the mazes 
of metaphysics. Not as a pioneer of ' higher ' criti- 
cism. Least of all because he was anything so com- 
monplace as a heretic or an atheist. The true rea- 
son appears to me to be very different. It is partly, 
at least, because in despite of his positive teaching 
he was endowed with a religious imagination which, 
in however abstract and metaphysical a fashion, 
illumined the whole profitless bulk of inconclusive 
demonstration ; which enabled him to find in notions 
most remote from sense-experience the only abiding 



THE GROUNDWORK 255 

realities; and to convert a purely rational adhesion 
to the conclusions supposed to flow from the nature 
of an inactive, impersonal, and unmoral substance, 
into something not quite inaptly termed the Love 
of God. 

It will, perhaps, be objected that we have no 
right to claim support from the example of system- 
makers with whose systems we do not happen to 
agree. How, it may be asked, can it concern us that 
Spinoza extracted something like a religion out of 
his philosophy, if we do not accept his philosophy? 
Or that Hegel found it possible to hitch large frag- 
ments of Christian dogma into the development of 
the ' Idea,' if we are not convinced by his dialectic? 
It concerns us, I reply, inasmuch as facts like these 
furnish fresh confirmation of a truth reached before 
by another method. The naturalistic creed, which 
merely systematises and expands the ordinary judg- 
ments of sense-perception, we found by direct ex- 
amination to be quite inadequate. We now note 
that its inadequacy has been commonly assumed by 
men whose speculative genius is admitted, who have 
seldom been content to allow that the world of 
which they had to give an account could be nar- 
rowed down to the naturalistic pattern. 



256 THE GROUNDWORK 



III 



But a more serious objection to the point of view 
here adopted remains to be considered. Is not, it 
will be asked, the whole method followed through- 
out the course of these Notes intrinsically unsound ? 
Is it not substantially identical with the attempt, 
not made now for the first time, to rest superstition 
upon scepticism, and to frame our creed, not in 
accordance with the rules of logic, but with the 
promptings of desire? It begins (may it not be 
said ?) by discrediting reason ; and having thus 
guaranteed its results against inconvenient criti- 
cism, it proceeds to make the needs of man the 
measure of * objective * reality, to erect his conve- 
nience into the touchstone of Eternal Truth, and to 
mete out the Universe on a plan authenticated only 
by his wishes. 

Now, on this criticism I have, in the first place, 
to observe that it errs in assuming, either that the 
object aimed at in the preceding discussion is to 
discredit reason, or that as a matter of fact this has 
been its effect. On the contrary, be the character 
of our conclusions what it may, they have at least 
been arrived at by allowing the fullest play to free, 
rational investigation. If one consequence of this 
investigation has been to diminish the importance 
commonly attributed to reason among the causes 
by which belief is produced, it is by the action of 



THE GROUNDWORK 257 

reason itself that this result has been brought about. 
If another consequence has been that doubts have 
been expressed as to the theoretic validity of certain 
universally accepted beliefs, this is because the right 
of reason to deal with every province of knowledge, 
untrammelled by arbitrary restrictions or customary 
immunities, has been assumed and acted upon. If, 
in addition to all this, we have been incidentally 
compelled to admit that as yet we are without a sat- 
isfactory philosophy, the admission has not been 
asked for in the interests either of scepticism or of 
superstition. Reason is not honoured by pretend- 
ing that she has done what as a matter of fact is still 
undone; nor need we be driven into a universal 
license of credulity by recognising that we must for 
the present put up with some working hypothesis 
which falls far short of speculative perfection. 

But, further, is it true to say that, in the absence 
of reason, we have contentedly accepted mere desire 
for our guide ? No doubt the theory here advocated 
requires us to take account, not merely of premises 
and their conclusions, but of needs and their satis- 
faction. But this is only asking us to do explicitly 
and on system what on the naturalistic theory is 
done unconsciously and at random. By the very 
constitution of our being we seem practically driven 
to assume a real world in correspondence with our 
ordinary judgments of perception. A harmony of 
some kind between our inner selves and the universe 
of which we form a part is thus the tacit postulate 



258 THE GROUNDWORK 

at the root of every belief we entertain about * phe- 
nomena * ; and all that I now contend for is, that a 
like harmony should provisionally be assumed be- 
tween that universe and other elements in our nat- 
ure which are of a later, of a more uncertain, but of 
no ignobler, growth. 

Whether this correspondence is best described 
as that which obtains between a ' need ' and its ' sat- 
isfaction,' may be open to question. But, at all 
events, let it be understood that if the relation so 
described is, on the one side, something different 
from that between a premise and its conclusion, so, 
on the other, it is intended to be equally remote from 
that between a desire and its fulfilment. That it has 
not the logical validity of the first I have already 
admitted, or rather asserted. That it has not the 
casual, wavering, and purely ' subjective ' character 
of the second is not less true. For the correspond- 
ence postulated is not between the fleeting fancies 
of the individual and the immutable verities of an 
unseen world, but between these characteristics of 
our nature, which we recognise as that in us which, 
though not necessarily the strongest, is the highest ; 
which, though not always the most universal, is 
nevertheless the best. 

But because this theory may seem alike remote 
from familiar forms both of dogmatism and scepti- 
cism, and because I am on that account the more 
anxious that no unmerited plausibility should be at- 
tributed to it through any obscurity in my way of 



THE GROUNDWORK 259 

presenting it, let me draw out, even at the cost of 
some repetition, a brief catalogue of certain things 
which may, and of certain other things which may 
not, be legitimately said concerning it. 

We may say of it, then, that it furnishes us with 
no adequate philosophy of religion. But we may 
not say of it that it leaves religion worse, or, indeed, 
otherwise provided for in this respect than science. 

We may say of it that it assumes without proof 
a certain consonance between the * subjective ' and 
the ' objective ' ; between what we are moved to 
believe and what in fact is. We may not say that 
the presuppositions of science depend upon any 
more solid, or, indeed, upon any different, founda- 
tion. 

We may say of it, if we please, that it gives us a 
practical, but not a theoretic, assurance of the 
truths with which it is concerned. But, if so, we 
must describe in the same technical language our 
assurance respecting the truths of the material 
world. 

We may say of it that it accepts provisionally 
the theory, based on scientific methods, which 
traces back the origin of all beliefs to causes which, 
for the most part, are non-rational, and which carry 
with them no warranty that they will issue in right 
opinion. But we may not say of it that the distinc- 
tion thus drawn between the non-rational causes 
which produce the immediate judgments of sense- 
perception, and those which produce judgments in 
17 



26o THE GROUNDWORK 

the sphere of ethics or theology, implies any supe- 
rior certitude in the case of the former. 

We may say of it that it admits judgments of 
sense-perception to be the most inevitable, but denies 
them to be the most worthy. 

We may say of it generally, that as it assumes 
the Whole, of which we desire a reasoned know- 
ledge, to include human consciousness as an element, 
it refuses to regard any system as other than irra- 
tional which, like Naturalism, leaves large tracts and 
aspects of that consciousness unaccounted for and 
derelict ; and that it utterly declines to circumscribe 
the Knowable by frontiers whose delimitation Rea- 
son itself assures us can be justified on no rational 
principle whatsoever. 



CHAPTER II 

* ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS ' 

If, as is not unlikely, there are readers who are 
unwilling to acknowledge this kind of equality be- 
tween the different branches of knowledge — who 
are disposed to represent Science as a Land of 
Goshen, bright beneath the unclouded splendours 
of the midday sun, while Religion lies beyond, 
wrapped in the impenetrable darkness of the Egyp- 
tian plague — I would suggest for their further con- 
sideration certain arguments, not drawn like those 
in an earlier portion of this Essay from the defi- 
ciencies which may be detected in scientific proof, 
but based exclusively upon an examination of funda- 
mental scientific ideas considered in themselves. For 
these ideas possess a quality, exhibited no doubt 
equally by ideas in other departments of knowledge, 
which admirably illustrates our ignorance of what 
we know best, our blindness to what we see most 
clearly. This quality, indeed, is not very easy to 
describe in a sentence ; but perhaps it may be pro- 
visionally indicated by saying that, although these 
ideas seem quite simple so long as we only have 



262 * ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS * 

to handle them for the practical purposes of daily 
life, yet, when they are subjected to critical inves- 
tigation, they appear to crumble under the pro- 
cess ; to lose all precision of outline ; to vanish like 
the magician in the story, leaving only an elu- 
sive mist in the grasp of those who would arrest 
them. 

Nothing, for instance, seems simpler than the 
idea involved in the statement that we are, each of 
us, situated at any given moment in some par- 
ticular portion of space, surrounded by a multitude 
of material things, which are constantly acting 
upon us and upon each other. A proposition of 
this kind is merely a generalised form of the judg- 
ments which we make every minute of our waking 
lives, about whose meaning we entertain no manner 
of doubt, which, indeed, provide us with our famil- 
iar examples of all that is most lucid and most cer- 
tain. Yet the purport of the sentence which ex- 
presses it is clear only till it is examined, is certain 
only till it is questioned ; while almost every word 
in it suggests, and has long suggested, perplexing 
problems to all who are prepared to consider them. 

What are ' we ' ? What is space ? Can ' we ' be 
in space, or is it only our bodies about which any 
such statement can be made ? What is a * thing ' ? 
and, in particular, what is a ' material thing ' ? 
What is meant by saying that one ' material thing ' 
acts upon another ? What is meant by saying that 
* material things ' act upon ' us * ? Here are six 



' ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS ' 263 

questions all directly and obviously arising out of 
our most familiar acts of judgment. Yet, direct and 
obvious as they are, it is hardly too much to say 
that they involve all the leading problems of mod- 
ern philosophy, and that the man who has found an 
answer to them is the fortunate possessor of a toler- 
ably complete system of metaphysic. 

Consider, for example, the simplest of the six 
questions enumerated above, namely. What is a 
' material thing ' ? Nothing could be plainer till 
you consider it. Nothing can be obscurer when 
you do. A ' thing ' has qualities — hardness, weight, 
shape, and so forth. Is it merely the sum of these 
qualities, or is it something more ? If it is merely 
the sum of its qualities, have these any independent 
existence ? Nay, is such an independent existence 
even conceivable ? If it is something more than the 
sum of its qualities, what is the relation of the ' quali- 
ties ' to the ' something more '? Again, can we on re- 
flection regard a ' thing ' as an isolated ' somewhat,' 
an entity self-sufficient and potentially solitary ? Or 
must we not rather regard it as being what it is in 
virtue of its relation to other ' somewhats,' which, 
again, are what they are in virtue of their relation to 
it, and to each other? And if we take, as I think we 
must, the latter alternative, are we not driven by it 
into a profitless progression through parts which 
are unintelligible by themselves, but which yet 
obstinately refuse to coalesce into any fully intel- 
ligible whole? 



264 ' ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS ' 

Now, I do not serve up these cold fragments of 
ancient though unsolved controversies for no better 
purpose than to weary the reader who is familiar 
with metaphysical discussion, and to puzzle the 
reader who is not. I rather desire to direct atten- 
tion to the universality of a difficulty which many 
persons seem glad enough to acknowledge when 
they come across it in Theology, though they ad- 
mit it only with reluctance in the case of Ethics and 
Esthetics, and for the most part completely ignore 
it when they are dealing with our knowledge of 
* phenomena.' Yet in this respect, at least, all these 
branches of knowledge would appear to stand very 
much upon an equality. In all of them conclusions 
seem more certain than premises, the superstruct- 
ure more stable than the foundation. In all of 
them we move with full assurance and a practical 
security only among ideas which are relative and 
dependent. In all of them these ideas, so clear and 
so sufficient for purposes of everyday thought and 
action, become confused and but dimly intelligible 
when examined in the unsparing light of critical 
analysis. 

We need not, therefore, be surprised if we find 
it hard to isolate the permanent element in Beauty, 
seeing that it eludes us in material objects; that the 
ground of Moral Law should not be wholly clear, 
seeing that the ground of Natural Law is so ob- 
scure ; that we do not adequately comprehend God, 
seeing that we can give no very satisfactory ac- 



' ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS ' 265 

count of what we mean by ' a thing.' Yet I think 
a more profitable lesson is to be learnt from admis- 
sions like these than the general inadequacy of our 
existing metaphysic. And it is the more necessary 
to consider carefully what that lesson is, inasmuch 
as a very perverted version of it forms the basis of 
the only modern system of English growth which, 
professing to provide us with a general philosophy, 
has received any appreciable amount of popular 
support. 

Mr. Spencer's theory admits, nay, insists, that 
what it calls ' ultimate scientific ideas ' are incon- 
sistent and, to use his own phrase, * unthinkable.* 
Space, time, matter, motion, force, and so forth, are 
each in turn shown to involve contradictions which 
it is beyond our power to solve, and obscurities 
which it is beyond our power to penetrate ; while 
the once famous dialectic of Hamilton and Mansel 
is invoked for the purpose of enforcing the same 
lesson with regard to the Absolute and the Uncon- 
ditioned, which those thinkers identified with God, 
but which Mr. Spencer prefers to describe as the 
Unknowable. 

So far, so good. Though the details of the dem- 
onstration may not be altogether to our liking, 
I, at least, have no particular quarrel with its gen- 
eral tenor, which is in obvious harmony with much 
that I have just been insisting on. But when we 
have to consider the conclusion which Mr. Spencer 
contrives to extract from these premises, our differ- 



266 'ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS' 

ences become irreconcilable. He has proved, or 
supposes himself to have proved, that the ' ultimate 
ideas ' of science and the ' ultimate ideas * of the- 
ology are alike ' unthinkable/ What is the proper 
inference to be drawn from these statements ? 
Why, clearly, that science and theology are so far 
on an equality that every proposition which con. 
siderations like these oblige us to assert about the 
one, we are bound to assert also about the other ; 
and that our general theory of knowledge must 
take account of the fact that both these great de- 
partments of it are infected by the same weakness. 

This, however, is not the inference drawn by Mr. 
Spencer. The idea that the conclusions of science 
should be profaned by speculative questionings is to 
him intolerable. He shrinks from an admission 
which seems to him to carry universal scepticism 
in its train. And he has, accordingly, hit upon a 
device for ' reconciling ' the differences between 
science and religion by which so lamentable a ca- 
tastrophe may be avoided. His method is a simple 
one. He divides the verities which have to be be- 
lieved into those which relate to the Knowable and 
those which relate to the Unknowable. What is 
knowable he appropriates, without exception, for 
science. What is unknowable he abandons, with- 
out reserve, to religion. With the results of this 
arbitration both contending parties should, in his 
opinion, be satisfied. It is true that religion may 
complain that by this arrangement it is made the 



'ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS* 26j 

residuary legatee of all that is ' unthinkable * ; but 
then, it should remember that it obtains in exchange 
an indefeasible title to all that is ' real.' Science, 
again, may complain that its activities are confined 
to the 'relative' and the 'dependent'; but then, 
it should remember that it has a monopoly of the 
'intelligible.' The one possesses all that can be 
known ; the other, all that seems worth knowing. 
With so equal a partition of the spoils both dispu- 
tants should be content. 

Without contesting the fairness of this curious 
arrangement, I am compelled to question its valid- 
ity. Science cannot thus transfer the burden of its 
own obscurities and contradictions to the shoulders 
of religion ; and Mr. Spencer is only, perhaps, mis- 
led into supposing such a procedure to be possible 
by his use of the word ' ultimate.' - ' Ultimate ' scien- 
tific ideas may, in his opinion, be ' unthinkable ' 
without prejudice to the ' thinkableness ' of 'proxi- 
mate ' scientific ideas. The one may dwell for ever 
in the penumbra of what he calls ' nascent conscious- 
ness,' in the dim twilight where religion and science 
are indistinguishable ; while the other stands out, 
definite and certain, in the full light of experience 
and verification. Such a view is not, I think, philo- 
sophically tenable. As soon as the ' unthinkable- 
ness * of ' ultimate ' scientific ideas is speculatively 
recognised, the fact must react upon our specula- 
tive attitudes towards 'proximate' scientific ideas. 
That which in the order of reason is dependent can- 



268 'ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS* 

not be unaffected by the weaknesses and the ob- 
scurities of that on which it depends. If the one is 
unintelligible, the other can hardly be rationally es- 
tablished. 

In order to prove this — if proof be required — we 
need not travel beyond the ample limits of Mr. 
Spencer's own philosophy. To be sure he obstinately 
shuts his ears against speculative doubts respecting 
the conclusions of science. ' To ask whether science 
is substantially true is [he observes] much like asking 
whether the sun gives light.' ^ It is, I admit, very 
much like it. But then, on Mr. Spencer's principles, 
does the sun give light? After due consideration we 
shall have to admit, I think, that it does not. For 
the question, if intelligently asked, not only involves 
the comprehension of matter, space, time, and force, 
which are, according to Mr. Spencer, all incompre- 
hensible, but there is the further difficulty that, if his 
system is to be believed, ' what we are conscious of 
as properties of matter, even down to weight and re- 
sistance, are but subjective affections produced by 
objective agencies, which are unknown and unknow- 
able.' ^ It would seem, therefore, either that the sun 
is a ' subjective affection,' in which case it can hardly 
be said to ' give light ' ; or it is ' unknown ' and ' un- 
knowable,' in which case no assertion respecting it 
can be regarded as supplying us with any very 
flattering specimen of scientific certitude. 

The truth is that Mr. Spencer, like many of his 
^ Fi'rs^ Principles, p. 19. ^ Principles of Psychology, ii. 493. 



' ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS ' 269 

predecessors, has impaired the value of his specula- 
tions by the hesitating timidity with which he has 
pursued them. Nobody is required to investigate 
first principles ; but those who voluntarily undertake 
the task should not shrink from its results. And if 
among these we have to count a theoretical scepti- 
cism about scientific knowledge, we make matters, 
not better, but worse, by attempting to ignore it. In 
Mr. Spencer's case this procedure has, among other 
ill consequences, caused him to miss the moral which 
at one moment lay ready to his hand. He has had 
the acuteness to see that our beliefs cannot be limited 
to the sequences and the co-existences of phenomena ; 
that the ideas on which science relies, and in terms 
of which all science has to be expressed, break down 
under the stress of criticism ; that beyond what we 
think we know, and in closest relationship with it, 
lies an infinite field which we do not know, and which 
with our present faculties we can never know, yet 
which cannot be ignored without making what we 
do know unintelligible and meaningless. But he 
has failed to see whither such speculations must in- 
evitably lead him. He has failed to see that if the 
certitudes of science lose themselves in depths of un- 
fathomable mystery, it may well be that out of these 
same depths there should emerge the certitudes of 
religion ; and that if the dependence of the ' know- 
able' upon the 'unknowable' embarrasses us not in 
the one case, no reason can be assigned why it should 
embarrass us in the other. 



270 ' ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS 

Mr. Spencer, in short, has avoided the error of 
dividing all reality into a Perceivable which concerns 
us, and an Unperceivable which, if it exists at all, 
concerns us not. Agnosticism so understood he ex- 
plicitly repudiates by his theory, if not by his practice. 
But he has not seen that, if this simple-minded creed 
be once abandoned, there is no convenient halting- 
place till we have swung round to a theory of things 
which is almost its precise opposite : a theory which, 
though it shrinks on its speculative side from no 
severity of critical analysis, yet on its practical side 
finds the source of its constructive energy in the 
deepest needs of man, and thus recognises, alike in 
science, in ethics, in beauty, in religion, the halting 
expression of a reality beyond our reach, the half- 
seen vision of transcendent Truth. 



CHAPTER III 

SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 



The point of view we have thus reached is obvi- 
ously the precise opposite of that which is adopted 
by those who either accept the naturalistic view of 
things in its simplicity, or who agree with natural- 
ism in taking our knowledge of Nature as the core 
and substance of their creed, while gladly adding to 
it such supernatural supplements as are permitted 
them by the canons of their rationalising philosophy. 
Of these last there are two varieties. There are 
those who refuse to add anything to the teaching 
of science proper, except such theological doctrines 
as they persuade themselves may be deduced from 
scientific premises. And there are those who, being 
less fastidious in the matter of proof, are prepared, 
tentatively and provisionally, to admit so much of 
theology as they think their naturalistic premises 
do not positively contradict. 

It must, I think, be admitted that the members 
of these two classes are at some disadvantage com- 
pared with the naturalistic philosophers proper. To 



272 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

be sure, the scheme of belief so confidently propound- 
ed by the latter is, as we have seen, both incoherent 
and inadequate. But its incoherence is hid from 
them by the inevitableness of its positive teaching ; 
while its inadequacy is covered by the, as yet, un- 
squandered heritage of sentiments and ideals which 
has come down to us from other ages inspired by 
other faiths. On the other hand, as a set-off against 
this, they may justly claim that their principles, 
such as they are, have been worked out to their le- 
gitimate conclusion. They have reached their jour- 
ney's end, and there they may at least rest, if it is 
not given them to be thankful. Far different is the 
fate of those who are reluctantly travelling the road 
to naturalism, driven thither by a false philosonhy 
honestly entertained. To them each new discovery 
in geology, morphology, anthropology, or the ' high- 
er criticism,' arouses as much theological anxiety 
as it does scientific interest. They are perpetually 
occupied in the task of ' reconciling,' as the phrase 
goes, * religion and science.' This is to them, not an 
intellectual luxury, but a pressing and overmaster- 
ing necessity. For their theology exists only on 
sufferance. It rules over its hereditary territories 
as a tributary vassal dependent on the forbearance 
of some encroaching overlord. Province after 
province which once acknowledged its sovereignty 
has been torn from its grasp ; and it depends no 
longer upon its own action, but upon the uncon- 
trolled policy of its too powerful neighbour, how 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 2/3 

long it shall preserve a precarious authority over 
the remainder. 

Now, my reasons for entirely dissenting from 
this melancholy view of the relations between 
the various departments of belief have been one 
of the chief themes of these Notes. But it must 
not be supposed that I intend either to deny that 
it is our business to ' reconcile ' all beliefs, so far 
as possible, into a self-consistent whole, or to as- 
sert that, because a perfectly coherent philosophy 
cannot as yet be attained, it is, in the meanwhile, a 
matter of complete indifference how many contra- 
dictions and obscurities we admit into our provi- 
sional system. Some contradictions and obscurities 
there needs must be. That we should not be able 
completely to harmonise the detached hints and 
isolated fragments in which alone Reality comes in- 
to relation with us ; that we should but imperfectly 
co-ordinate what we so imperfectly comprehend, 
is what we might expect, and what for the pres- 
ent we have no choice but to submit to. Yet 
it will, I think, be found on examination that 
the discrepancies which exist between different de- 
partments of belief are less in number and impor- 
tance than those which exist within the various de- 
partments themselves ; that the difficulties which 
science, ethics, or theology have to solve in common 
are more formidable by far than any which divide 
them from each other ; and that, in particular, the 
supposed 'conflict between science and religion,' 



274 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

which occupies so large a space in contemporary 
literature, is the theme of so much vigorous debate, 
and seems to so many earnest souls the one question 
worth resolving, is either concerned for the most 
part with matters in themselves comparatively tri- 
fling, or touches interests lying far beyond the limits 
of pure theology. 

Of course, it must be remembered that I am now 
talking of science, not of naturalism. The differ- 
ences between naturalism and theology are, no 
doubt, irreconcilable, since naturalism is by defini- 
tion the negation of all theology. But science must 
not be dragged into every one of the many quarrels 
which naturalism has taken upon its shoulders. 
Science is in no way concerned, for instance, to deny 
the reality of a world unrevealed to us in sense-per- 
ception, nor the existence of a God who, however 
imperfectly, may be known by those who diligently 
seek Him. All it says, or ought to say, is that these 
are matters beyond its jurisdiction ; to be tried, 
therefore, in other courts, and before judges admin- 
istering different laws. 

But we may go further. The being of God may 
be beyond the province of science, and yet it may 
be from a consideration of the general body of 
scientific knowledge that philosophy draws some 
important motives for accepting the doctrine. Any 
complete survey of the ' proofs of theism ' would, I 
need not say, be here quite out of place ; yet, in 
order to make clear where I think the real difficulty 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 275 

lies in framing any system which shall include both 
theology and science, I may be permitted to say 
enough about theism to show where I think the 
difficulty does not lie. It does not lie in the doctrine 
that there is a supernatural or, let us say, a meta- 
physical ground, on which the whole system of 
natural phenomena depend ; nor in the attribution 
to this ground of the quality of reason, or, it may 
be, of something higher than reason, in which rea- 
son is, so to speak, included. This belief, with all 
its inherent obscurities, is, no doubt, necessary to 
theology, but it is at the same time so far, in my 
judgment, from being repugnant to science that, 
without it, the scientific view of the natural world 
would not be less, but more, beset with difficulties 
than it is at present. 

This fact has been in part obscured by certain 
infelicities in the popular statements of what is 
known as the ' Argument from Design.* In a 
famous answer to that argument it has been point- 
ed out that the inference from the adaptation of 
means to ends, which rightly convinces us in the 
case of manufactured articles that they are pro- 
duced by inteUigent contrivance, can scarcely be 
legitimately applied to the case of the universe as 
a whole. An induction which may be perfectly 
valid within the circle of phenomena, may be quite 
meaningless when it is employed to account for 
the circle itself. You cannot infer a God from 
the existence of the world as you infer an architect 



276 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

from the existence of a house, or a mechanic from 
the existence of a watch. 

Without discussing the merits of this answer at 
length, so much may, I think, be conceded to it — 
that it suggests a doubt whether the theologians 
who thus rely upon an inductive proof of the being 
of God are not in a position somewhat similar to 
that of the empirical philosophers who rely upon 
an inductive proof of the uniformity of Nature. 
The uniformity of Nature, as I have before ex- 
plained, cannot be proved by experience, for it is 
what makes proof from experience possible.^ We 
must bring it, or something like it, to the facts in 
order to infer anything from them at all. Assume 
it, and we shall no doubt find that, broadly speaking 
and in the rough, what we call the facts conform to 
it. But this conformity is not inductive proof, and 
must not be confounded with inductive proof. In 
the same way, I do not contend that, if we start from 
Nature without God, we shall be logically driven to 
believe in Him by a mere consideration of the ex- 
amples of adaptation which Nature undoubtedl}^ con- 
tains. It is enough that when we bring this belief 
with us to the study of phenomena, we can say of 

1 This phrase has a Kantian ring about it ; but I need not say- 
that it is not here used in the Kantian sense. The argument is 
touched on, as the reader may recollect, at the end of Chapter I., 
Part II. See, however, below, a further discussion as to what the 
uniformity of Nature means, and as to what may be properly in- 
ferred from it. 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 2"]"] 

it, what we have just said of the principle of uni- 
formity, namely, that, ' broadly speaking and in the 
rough,' the facts harmonise with it, and that it gives 
a unity and a coherence to our apprehension of the 
natural world which it would not otherwise possess. 



II 

But the argument from design, in whatever 
shape it is accepted, is not the only one in favour of 
theism with which scientific knowledge furnishes 
us. Nor is it, to my mind, the most important. 
The argument from design rests upon the world as 
known. But something also may be inferred from 
the mere fact that we know — a fact which, like 
every other, has to be accounted for. And how is 
it to be accounted for? I need not repeat again 
what I have already said about Authority and Rea- 
son ; for it is evident that, whatever be the part 
played by reason among the proximate causes of 
belief, among the ultimate causes it plays, accord- 
ing to science, no part at all. On the naturalistic 
hypothesis, the whole premises of knowledge are 
clearly due to the blind operation of material causes, 
and in the last resort to these alone. On that hy- 
pothesis we no more possess free reason than we 
possess free will. As all our volitions are the in- 
evitable product of forces which are quite alien to 
morality, so all our conclusions are the inevitable 
product of forces which are quite alien to reason. 



27B SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

As the casual introduction of conscience, or a ' good 
will,' into the chain of causes which ends in a * vir- 
tuous action ' ought not to suggest any idea of 
merit, so the casual introduction of a little ratiocina- 
tion as a stray link in the chain of causes which 
ends in what we are pleased to describe as a ^ dem- 
onstrated conclusion,' ought not to be taken as 
implying that the conclusion is in harmony with 
fact. Morality and reason are august names, which 
give an air of respectability to certain actions and 
certain arguments ; but it is quite obvious on exam- 
ination that, if the naturalistic hypothesis be cor- 
rect, they are but unconscious tools in the hands of 
their unmoral and non - rational antecedents, and 
that the real responsibility for all they do lies in the 
distribution of matter and energy which happened 
to prevail far back in the incalculable past. 

These conclusions are, no doubt, as we saw at 
the beginning of this Essay, embarrassing enough 
to Morality. But they are absolutely ruinous to 
Knowledge. For they require us to accept a sys- 
tem as rational, one of whose doctrines is that the 
system itself is the product of causes which have no 
tendency to truth rather than falsehood, or to false- 
hood rather than truth. Forget, if you please, that 
reason itself is the result, like nerves or muscles, of 
physical antecedents. Assume (a tolerably violent 
assumption) that in dealing with her premises she 
obeys only her own laws. Of what value is this 
autonomy if those premises are settled for her by 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 279 

purely irrational forces, which she is powerless to 
control, or even to comprehend ? The professor of 
naturalism rejoicing in the display of his dialectical 
resources, is like a voyager, pacing at his own pleas- 
ure up and down the ship's deck, who should sup- 
pose that his movements had some important share 
in determining his position on the illimitable ocean. 
And the parallel would be complete if we can con- 
ceive such a voyager pointing to the alertness of 
his step and the vigour of his limbs as auguring 
well for the successful prosecution of his journey, 
while assuring you in the very same breath that the 
vessel, within whose narrow bounds he displays all 
this meaningless activity, is drifting he knows not 
whence nor whither, without pilot or captain, at the 
bidding of shifting winds and undiscovered currents. 

Consider the following propositions, selected 
from the naturalistic creed or deduced from it : — 

(i.) My beliefs, in so far as they are the result of 
reasoning at all, are founded on premises produced 
in the last resort by the * collision of atoms.* 

(ii.) Atoms, having no prejudices in favour of 
truth, are as likely to turn out wrong premises as 
right ones ; nay, more likely, inasmuch as truth is 
single and error manifold. 

(iii.) My premises, therefore, in the first place, 
and my conclusions in the second, are certainly 
untrustworthy, and probably false. Their falsity, 
moreover, is of a kind which cannot be remedied ; 
since any attempt to correct it must start from 



280 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

premises not suffering under the same defect. But 
no such premises exist. 

(iv.) Therefore, again, my opinion about the 
original causes which produced my premises, as it 
is an inference from them, partakes of their weak- 
ness ; so that I cannot either securely doubt my 
own certainties or be certain about my own doubts. 

This is scepticism indeed ; scepticism which is 
forced by its own inner nature to be sceptical even 
about itself ; which neither kills belief' nor lets it 
live. But it may perhaps be suggested in reply to 
this argument, that whatever force it may have 
against the old-fashioned naturalism, its edge is 
blunted when turned against the evolutionary ag- 
nosticism of more recent growth ; since the latter 
establishes the existence of a machinery which, irra- 
tional though it be, does really tend gradually, and 
in the long run, to produce true opinions rather 
than false. That machinery is, I need not say. Se- 
lection, and the other forces (if other forces there be) 
which bring the ' organism ' into more and more 
perfect harmony with its ' environment.' Some har- 
mony is necessary — so runs the argument — in order 
that any form of life may be possible ; and as life de- 
velops, the harmony necessarily becomes more and 
more complete. But since there is no more impor- 
tant form in which this harmony can show itself than 
truth of belief, which is, indeed, only another name 
for the perfect correspondence between belief and 
fact. Nature, herein acting as a kind of cosmic In- 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 28 1 

quisition, will repress by judicious persecution any 
lapses from the standard of naturalistic orthodoxy. 
Sound doctrine will be fostered ; error will be dis- 
couraged or destroyed ; until at last, by methods 
which are neither rational themselves nor of rational 
origin, the cause of reason will be fully vindicated. 
Arguments like these are, however, quite insuffi- 
cient to justify the conclusion which is drawn from 
them. In the first place, they take no account of 
any causes which were in operation before life ap- 
peared upon the planet. Until there occurred the 
unexplained leap from the Inorganic to the Organic, 
Selection, of course, had no place among the evolu- 
tionary processes ; while even after that date it was, 
from the nature of the case, only concerned to foster 
and perpetuate those chance -borne beliefs which 
minister to the continuance of the species. But 
what an utterly inadequate basis for speculation is 
here ! We are to suppose that powers which were 
evolved in primitive man and his animal progenitors 
in order that they might kill with success and marry 
in security, are on that account fitted to explore the 
secrets of the universe. We are to suppose that 
the fundamental beliefs on which these powers of 
reasoning are to be exercised reflect with sufficient 
precision remote aspects of reality, though they were 
produced in the main by physiological processes 
which date from a stage of development when the 
only curiosities which had to be satisfied were those 
of fear and those of hunger. To say that instru- 



282 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

merits of research constructed solely for uses like 
these cannot be expected to supply us with a meta- 
physic or a theology, is to say far too little. They 
cannot be expected to give us any general view even 
of the phenomenal world, or to do more than guide 
us in comparative safety from the satisfaction of one 
useful appetite to the satisfaction of another. On 
this theory, therefore, we are again driven back to 
the same sceptical position in which we found our- 
selves left by the older forms of the ' positive,* or 
naturalistic creed. On this theory, as on the other, 
reason has to recognise that her rights of indepen- 
dent judgment and review are merely titular digni- 
ties, carrying with them no effective powers ; and 
that, whatever her pretensions, she is, for the most 
part, the mere editor and interpreter of the utter- 
ances of unreason. 

I do not believe that any escape from these per- 
plexities is possible, unless we are prepared to bring 
to the study of the world the presupposition that it 
was the work of a rational Being, who made zl intel- 
ligible, and at the same time made us, in however 
feeble a fashion, able to understand it. This concep- 
tion does not solve all difficulties ; far from it.^ But, 

^ According to a once prevalent theory, ' innate ideas ' were true 
because they were implanted in us by God. According to my way 
of putting it, there must be a God to justify our confidence in (what 
used to be called) innate ideas. I have given the argument in a 
form which avoids all discussion as to the nature of the relation 
between mind and body. Whatever be the mode of describing 
this which ultimately commends itself to naturalistic psychologists, 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 283 

at least, it is not on the face of it incoherent. It does 
not attempt the impossible task of extracting reason 
from unreason; nor does it require us to accept 
among scientific conclusions any which effectually 
shatter the credibility of scientific premises. 

Ill 

Theism, then, whether or not it can in the strict 
meaning of the word be described as proved by sci- 
ence, is a principle which science, for a double rea- 
son, requires for its own completion. The ordered 
system of phenomena asks for a cause ; our knowl- 
edge of that system is inexplicable unless we assume 
for it a rational Author. Under this head, at least, 
there should be no ' conflict between science and re- 
ligion.' 

It is true, of course, that if theism smoothes away 
some of the difficulties which atheism raises, it is not 
on that account without difficulties of its own. We 
cannot, for example, form, I will not say any ade- 
quate, but even any tolerable, idea of the mode in 
which God is related to, and acts on, the world of 
phenomena. That He created it, that He sustains 
it, we are driven to believe. How He created it, 
how He sustains it, is impossible for us to imagine. 
But let it be observed that the difficulties which thus 
arise are no peculiar heritage of theology, or of a 

the reasoning in the text holds good. Cf. the purely sceptical 
presentation of the argument contained in Philosophic Doubts 
chap. xiii. 



284 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

science which accepts among its presuppositions the 
central truth which theology teaches. Naturalism 
itself has to face them in a yet more embarrassing 
form. For they meet us not only in connection with 
the doctrine of God, but in connection with the doc- 
trine of man. Not Divinity alone intervenes in the 
world of things. Each living soul, in its measure 
and degree, does the same. Each living soul which 
acts on its surroundings raises questions analogous 
to, and in some ways more perplexing than, those 
suggested by the action of a God immanent in a 
universe of phenomena. 

Of course I am aware that, in thus speaking of 
the connection between man and his material sur- 
roundings, I am assuming the truth of a theory 
which some men of science (in this, however, travel- 
ling a little beyond their province) would most 
energetically deny. But their denial reall}'' only 
serves to emphasise the extreme difficulty of the 
problem raised by the relation of the Self to phenom- 
ena. So hardly pressed are they by these difficul- 
ties that, in order to evade them, they attempt an 
impossible act of suicide ; and because the Self 
refuses to figure as a phenomenon among phenom- 
ena, or complacently to fit in to a purely scientific 
view of the world, they set about the hopeless task 
of suppressing it altogether. Enough has already 
been said on this point to permit me to pass it by. 
I will, therefore, only observe that those who ask us 
to reject the conviction entertained by each one of 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 285 

US, that he does actually and effectually intervene in 
the material world, may have many grounds of ob- 
jection to theolog}^ but should certainly not include 
among them the reproach that it asks us to believe 
the incredible. 

But, in truth, without going into the metaphysics 
of the Self, our previous discussions ^ contain ample 

^ Cf. ante. Part II., Chaps. I. and II. It may be worth while 
reminding the reader of one set of difficulties to which I have made 
little reference in the text. Every theory of the relation between 
Will, or, more strictly, the Willing Self and Matter, must come under 
one of two heads : — (i) Either Will acts on Matter, or (2) it does 
not. If it does act on Matter, it must be either as Free Will or as 
Determined Will. If it is as Free Will, it upsets the uniformity of 
Nature, and our most fundamental scientific conceptions must be 
recast. If it is as Determined Will, that is to say, if volition be in- 
terpolated as a necessary link between one set of material move- 
ments and another, then, indeed, it leaves the uniformity of Nature 
untouched ; but it violates mechanical principles. According to 
the mechanical view of the world, the condition of any material sys- 
tem at one moment is absolutely determined by its condition at the 
preceding moment. In a world so conceived there is no room for 
the interpolation even of Determined Will among the causes of ma- 
terial change. It is mere surplusage. 

(2. ) If the Will does not act on Matter, then we must suppose 
either that volition belongs to a psychic series running in a parallel 
stream to the physiological changes of the brain, though neither in- 
fluenced by it nor influencing it — which is, of course, the ancient 
theory of pre-established harmony ; or else we must suppose that 
it is a kind of superfluous consequence of certain physiological 
changes, produced presumably without the exhaustion of any form 
of energy, and having no effect whatever, either upon the material 
world or, I suppose, upon other psychic conditions. This reduces 
us to automata, and automata of a kind very difficult to find proper 
accommodation for in a world scientifically conceived. 

None of these alternatives seem very attractive, but one of them 
would seem to be inevitable. 



286 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

material for showing how impenetrable are the mists 
which obscure the relation of mind to matter, of 
things to the perception of things. Neither can be 
eliminated from our system. Both must perforce 
form elements in every adequate representation of 
reality. Yet the philosophic artist has still to arise 
who shall combine the two into a single picture, 
without doing serious violence to essential features, 
either of the one or the other. I am myself, indeed, 
disposed to doubt whether any concession made by 
the ' subjective ' to the * objective,' or by the ' ob- 
jective' to the 'subjective,' short of the total de- 
struction of one or the other, will avail to produce 
a harmonious scheme. And certainly no discord 
could be so barren, so unsatisfying, so practically 
impossible, as a harmony attained at such a cost 
We must acquiesce, then, in the existence of an un- 
solved difficulty. But it is a difficulty which meets 
us, in an even more intractable form, when we strive 
to realise the nature of our own relations to the little 
world in which we move, than when we are dealing 
with a like problem in respect to the Divine Spirit, 
Who is the Ground of all being and the Source of 
all change. 

IV 

But though there should thus be no conflict 
between theology and science, either as to the exist- 
ence of God or as to the possibility of His acting 
on phenomena, it by no means follows that the idea 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 287 

of God which is suggested by science is compatible 
with the idea of God which is developed by theology. 
Identical, of course, they need not be. Theology 
would be unnecessary if all we are capable of learn- 
ing about God could be inferred from a study of 
Nature. Compatible, however, they seemingly must 
be, if science and religion are to be at one. 

And yet I know not whether those who are most 
persuaded that the claims of these two powers are 
irreconcilable rest their case willingly upon the most 
striking incongruity between them which can be 
produced — I mean the existence of misery and the 
triumphs of wrong. Yet no one is, or, indeed, could 
be, blind to the difficulty which thence arises. From 
the world as presented to us by science we might 
conjecture a God of power and a God of reason ; 
but we never could infer a God who was wholly 
loving and wholly just. So that what religion pro- 
claims aloud to be His most essential attributes are 
precisely those respecting which the oracles of 
science are doubtful or are dumb. 

One reason, I suppose, why this insistent thought 
does not, so far as my observation goes, supply a 
favourite weapon of controversial attack, is that 
ethics is obviously as much interested in the moral 
attributes of God as theology can ever be (a point 
to which I shall presently return). But another 
reason, no doubt, may be found in the fact that the 
difficulty is one which has been profoundly realised 
by religious minds ages before organised science can 



288 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

be said to have existed ; while, on the other hand, 
the growth of scientific knowledge has neither in- 
creased nor diminished the burden of it by a feather- 
weight. The question, therefore, seems, though not, 
I think, quite correctly, to be one which is wholly, 
as it were, within the frontiers of theology, and 
which theologians may, therefore, be left to deal 
with as best they may, undisturbed by any argu- 
ments supplied by science. If this be not in theory 
strictly true, it is in practice but little wide of the 
mark. The facts which raise the problem in its 
acutest form belong, indeed, to that portion of the 
experience of life which is the common property of 
science and theology ; but theology is much more 
deeply concerned in them than science can ever be, 
and has long faced the unsolved problem which they 
present. The weight which it has thus borne for 
all these centuries is not likely now to crush it ; and, 
paradoxical though it seems, it is yet surely true, 
that what is a theological stumbling-block may also 
be a religious aid ; and that it is in part the thought 
of * all creation groaning and travailing in pain to- 
gether, waiting for redemption,' which creates in 
man the deepest need for faith in the love of God. 

V 

I conceive, then, that those who talk of the * con- 
flict between science and religion * do not, as a rule, 
refer to the difficulty presented by the existence of 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 289 

Evil. Where, then, in their opinion, is the point of 
irreconcilable difference to be found? It will, I sup- 
pose, at once be replied, in Miracles. But though 
the answer has in it a measure of truth, though, with- 
out doubt, it is possible to approach the real kernel 
of the problem from the side of miracles, I confess 
this seems to me to be in fact but seldom accom- 
plished ; while the very term is more suggestive of 
controversy, wearisome, unprofitable, and unending, 
than any other in the language, Free Will alone be- 
ing excepted. Into this Serbonian bog I scarcely 
dare ask the reader to follow me, though the advent- 
ure must, I am afraid, be undertaken if the purpose 
of this chapter is to be accomplished. 

In the first place, then, it seems to me unfort- 
unate that the principle of the Uniformity of Nat- 
ure should so often be dragged into a controversy 
with which its connection is so dubious and obscure. 
For what do we mean by saying that Nature is uni- 
form ? We may mean, perhaps we ought to mean, 
that (leaving Free Will out of account) the condition 
of the world at one moment is so connected with its 
condition at the next, that if we could imagine it 
brought twice into exactly the same position, its 
subsequent history would in each case be exactly 
the same. Now no one, I suppose, imagines that uni- 
formity in this sense has any quarrel with miracles. 
If a miracle is a wonder wrought by God to meet 
the needs arising out of the special circumstances of 
a particular moment, then, supposing the circum- 



290 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

Stances were to recur, as they would if the world 
were twice to pass through the same phase, the 
miracle, we cannot doubt, would recur also. It is 
not possible to suppose that the uniformity of Nat- 
ure thus broadly interpreted would be marred by 
Him on Whom Nature depends, and Who is im- 
manent in all its changes. 

But it will be replied that the uniformity with 
which miracles are thus said to be consistent carries 
with it no important consequences whatever. Its 
truth or untruth is a matter of equal indifference to 
the practical man, the man of science, and the phi- 
losopher. It asserts in reality (it may be said) no 
more than this, that if history once began repeating 
itself, it would go on doing so, like a recurring dec- 
imal. But as history in fact never does exactly re- 
peat itself, as the universe never is twice over pre- 
cisely in the same condition, we should no more be 
able to judge the future from the past, or to detect 
the operation of particular laws of Nature in a world 
where only this kind of theoretic uniformity pre- 
vailed, than we should under the misrule of chaos 
and blind chance. 

There is force in these observations, which are, 
however, much more embarrassing to the philos- 
ophy of science than to that of theology. Without 
doubt all experimental inference, as well as the or- 
dinary conduct of life, depends on supplementing 
this general view of the uniformity of Nature with 
certain working hypotheses which are not, though 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 29I 

they always ought to be, most carefully distin- 
guished from it. One of these is, that Nature is 
not merely uniform as a whole, but is made up of a 
bundle of smaller uniformities ; or, in other words, 
that there is a determinate relation, not only be- 
tween the successive phases of the whole universe, 
but between successive phases of certain fragments 
of it ; which successive phases we commonly de- 
scribe as ' causes ' and ' effects.' Another of these 
working hypotheses is, that though the universe as 
a whole never repeats itself, these isolated fragments 
of it do. And a third is, that we have means at our 
disposal whereby these fragments can be accurately 
divided off from the rest of Nature, and confidently 
recognised when they recur. Now I doubt whether 
any one of these three presuppositions — which, be it 
noted, lie at the very root of the collection of em- 
pirical maxims which we dignify with the name of 
inductive logic — can, from the point of view of philos- 
ophy, be regarded as more than an approximation. 
It is hard to believe that the concrete Whole of 
things can be thus cut up into independent portions. 
It is still harder to believe that any such portion is 
ever repeated absolutely unaltered ; since its char- 
acter must surely in part depend upon its relation 
to all the other portions, which (by hypothesis) are 
not repeated with it. And it is quite impossible to 
believe that inductive logic has succeeded by any 
of its methods in providing a sure criterion for de- 
termining, when any such portion is apparentl}^ re- 



292 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

peated, whether all the elements, and not more than 
all, are again present which on previous occasions 
did really constitute it a case of ' cause * and ' effect.* ^ 

If this seems paradoxical, it is chiefly because 
we habitually use phraseology which, strictly inter- 
preted, seems to imply that a * law of Nature,' as it 
is called, is a sort of self-subsisting entity, to whose 
charge is confided some department in the world 
of phenomena, over which it rules with undisputed 
sway. Of course this is not so. In the world of 
phenomena. Reality is exhausted by what is and 
what happens. Beyond this there is nothing. These 
* laws ' are merely abstractions devised by us for 
our own guidance through the complexities of fact. 
They possess neither independent powers nor actual 
existence. And if we would use language with per- 
fect accuracy, we ought, it would seem, either to 
say that the same cause would always be followed 
by precisely the same effect, if it recurred — which 
it never does ; or that, in certain regions of Nature, 
though only in certain regions, we can detect sub- 
ordinate uniformities of repetition which, though 
not exact, enable us without sensible insecurity or 
error to anticipate the future or reconstruct the 
past. 

This hurried glance which I have asked the 
reader to take into some obscure corners of induc- 
tive theory is by no means intended to suggest that 

^ See some of these points more fully worked out in Philosophic 
Doubt, Part I., Chap. II. 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 293 

it is as easy to believe in a miracle as not ; or even 
that on other grounds, presently to be referred to, 
miracles ought not to be regarded as incredible. 
But it does show, in my judgment, that no profit can 
yet be extracted from controversies as to the pre- 
cise relation in which they stand to the Order of 
the world. Those engaged in these controversies 
have not uncommonly committed a double error. 
They have, in the first place, chosen to assume that 
we have a perfectly clear and generally accepted 
theory as to what is meant by the Uniformity of 
Nature, as to what is meant by particular Laws of 
Nature, as to the relation in which the particular 
Laws stand to the general Uniformity, and as to the 
kind of proof by which each is to be established. 
And, having committed this philosophic error, they 
proceed to add to it the historical error of crediting 
primitive theology with a knowledge of this theory, 
and with a desire to improve upon it. They seem 
to suppose that apostles and prophets were in the 
habit of looking at the natural world in its ordinary 
course, with the eyes of an eighteenth-century deist, 
as if it were a bundle of uniformities which, once 
set going, went on for ever automatically repeating 
themselves ; and that their message to mankind con- 
sisted in announcing the existence of another, or 
supernatural world, Avhich occasionally upset one 
or two of these natural uniformities by means of a 
miracle. No such theory can be extracted from 
their writings, and no such theory should be read 



294 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

into them ; and this not merely because such an at- 
tribution is unhistorical, nor yet because there is 
any ground for doubting the interaction of the 
* spiritual ' and the ' natural ' ; but because this ac- 
count of the ' natural ' itself is one which, if inter- 
preted strictly, seems open to grave philosophical 
objection, and is certainly deficient in philosophic 
proof. 

The real difficulties connected with theological 
miracles lie elsewhere. Two qualities seem to be of 
their essence : they must be wonders, and they must 
be wonders due to the special action of Divine power ; 
and each of these qualities raises a special problem of 
its own. That raised by the first is the question of 
evidence. What amount of evidence, if any, is suf- 
ficient to render a miracle credible? And on this, 
which -is apart from the main track of my argument, 
I may perhaps content myself with pointing out, 
that if by evidence is meant, as it usually is, histor- 
ical testimony, this is not a fixed quantity, the same 
for every reasonable man, no matter what may be 
his other opinions. It varies, and must necessarily 
vary, with the general views, the 'psychological 
climate,' which he brings to its consideration. It is 
possible to get twelve plain men to agree on the evi- 
dence which requires them to announce from the jury 
box a verdict of guilty or not guilty, because they 
start with a common stock of presuppositions, in the 
light of which the evidence submitted to them may, 
without preliminary discussion, be interpreted. But 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 295 

when, as in the case of theological miracles, there is 
no such common stock, any agreement on a verdict 
can scarcely be looked for. One of the jury may 
hold the naturalistic view of the world. To him, of 
course, the occurrence of a miracle involves the 
abandonment of the whole philosophy in terms of 
which he is accustomed to interpret the universe. 
Argument, custom, prejudice, authority — every con- 
viction-making machine, rational and non-rational, 
by which his scheme of belief has been fashioned — 
conspire to make this vast intellectual revolution 
difficult. And we need not be surprised that even 
the most excellent evidence for a few isolated inci- 
dents is quite insufficient to effect his conversion; 
nor that he occasionally shows a disposition to go 
very extraordinary lengths in contriving historical 
or critical theories for the purpose of explaining 
such evidence away. 

Another may believe in * verbal inspiration.' To 
him, the discussion of evidence in the ordinary sense 
is quite superfluous. Every miracle, whatever its 
character, whatever the circumstances in which it 
occurred, whatever its relation, whether essential 
or accidental, to the general scheme of religion, is 
to be accepted with equal confidence, provided it 
be narrated in the works of inspired authors. It is 
written : it is therefore true. And in the light of 
this presupposition alone must the results of any 
merely critical or historical discussion be finally 
judged. 



296 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

A third of our supposed jurymen may reject 
both naturalism and verbal inspiration. He may 
appraise the evidence alleged in favour of ' Wonders 
due to the special action of Divine power ' by the 
light of an altogether different theory of the world 
and of God's action therein. He may consider re- 
ligion to be as necessary an element in any adequate 
scheme of belief as science itself. Every event, 
therefore, whether wonderful or not, a belief in 
whose occurrence is involved in that religion, every 
event by whose disproof the religion would be seri- 
ously impoverished or altogether destroyed, has be- 
hind it the whole combined strength of the system 
to which it belongs. It is not, indeed, believed in- 
dependently of external evidence, any more than 
the most ordinary occurrences in history are be- 
lieved independently of external evidence.. But 
it does not require, as some people appear to sup- 
pose, the impossible accumulation of proof on proof, 
of testimony on testimony, before the presumption 
against it can be neutralised. For, in truth, no such 
presumption may exist at all. Strange as the mira- 
cle must seem, and inharmonious when considered 
as an alien element in an otherwise naturalistic set- 
ting, it may assume a character of inevitableness, it 
may almost proclaim aloud that thus it has occurred, 
and not otherwise, to those who consider it in its 
relation, not to the natural world alone, but to the 
spiritual, and to the needs of man as a citizen of 
both. 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 29/ 



VI 



Many other varieties of ' psychological climate ' 
might be described ; but what I have said is, perhaps, 
enough to show how absurd it is to expect any 
unanimity as to the value of historical evidence until 
some better agreement has been arrived at respect- 
ing the presuppositions in the light of which alone 
such evidence can be estimated. I pass, therefore, 
to the difficulty raised by the second^ and much more 
fundamental, attribute of theological miracles to 
which I have adverted, namely, that they are due to 
the ' special action of God.' But this, be it ob- 
served, is, from a religious point of view, no pecul- 
iarity of miracles. Few schemes of thought which 
have any religious flavour about them at all, wholly 
exclude the idea of what I will venture to call the 
'• preferential exercise of Divine power,' whatever 
differences of opinion may exist as to the manner in 
which it is manifested. There are those who reject 
miracles but who, at least in those fateful moments 
when they imaginatively realise their own helpless- 
ness, will admit what in a certain literature is called 
a ' special Providence.' There are those who reject 
the notion of ' special Providence,' but who admit a 
sort of Divine superintendence over the general 
course of history. There are those, again, who re- 
ject in its ordinary shape the idea of Divine super- 
intendence, but who conceive that they can escape 



298 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

from philosophic reproach by beating out the idea 
yet a little thinner, and admitting that there does 
exist somewhere a ' Power which makes for right- 
eousness.' 

For my own part, I think all these various 
opinions are equally open to the only form of attack 
which it is worth while to bring against any one of 
them. And if we allow, as (supposing religion in 
any shape to be true) we must allow, that the * pref- 
erential action ' of Divine power is possible, nothing 
is gained by qualifying the admission with all those 
fanciful limitations and distinctions with which dif- 
ferent schools of thought have seen fit to encumber 
it. The admission itself, however, is one which, in 
whatever shape it may be made, no doubt suggests 
questions of great difficulty. How can the Divine 
Being Who is the Ground and Source of everything 
that is, Who sustains all, directs all, produces all, be 
connected more closely with one part of that which 
He has created than with another ? If every event 
be wholly due to Him, how can we say that any single 
event, such as a miracle, or any tendency of events, 
such as ^ making for righteousness,' is specially His ? 
What room for difference or distinction is there 
within the circuit of His universal power? Since 
the relation between His creation and Him is 
throughout and in every particular one of absolute 
dependence, what meaning can we attach to the 
metaphor which represents Him as taking part with 
one fragment of it, or as hostile to another ? 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 299 

Now it has, in the first place, to be observed that 
ethics is as much concerned with this difficulty as 
theology itself. For if we cannot believe in * prefer- 
ential action,' neither can we believe in the moral 
qualities of which 'preferential action' is the sign; 
and with the moral qualities of God is bound up 
the fate of anything which deserves to be called 
morality at all. I am not now arguing that ethics 
cannot exist unsupported by theism. On this theme 
I have already said something, and shall have to say 
more. My present contention is, that though history 
may show plenty of examples in heathendom of 
ethical theory being far in advance of the recognised 
religion, it is yet impossible to suppose that morality 
would not ultimately be destroyed by the clearly 
realised belief in a God Who was either indifferent 
to good or inclined to evil. 

For a universe in which all the power was on the 
side of the Creator, and all the morality on the side 
of creation, would be one compared with which the 
universe of naturalism would shine out a paradise 
indeed. Even the poet has not dared to represent 
Jupiter torturing Prometheus without the dim fig- 
ure of Avenging Fate waiting silently in the back- 
ground. But if the idea of an immoral Creator 
governing a world peopled with moral, or even 
with sentient, creatures, is a speculative nightmare, 
the case is not materially mended by substituting 
for an immoral Creator an indifferent one. Once 
assume a God, and we shall be obliged, sooner or 



300 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

later, to introduce harmony into our system by 
making obedience to His will coincident with the 
established rules of conduct. We cannot frame our 
advice to mankind on the hypothesis that to defy 
Omnipotence is the beginning of wisdom. But if 
this process of adjustment is to be done consistently 
with the maintenance of any eternal and absolute 
distinction between right and wrong, then must His 
will be a * good will,' and we must suppose Him to 
look with favour upon some parts of this mixed 
world of good and evil, and with disfavour upon 
others. If, on the other hand, this distinction seems 
to us metaphysically impossible ; if we cannot do 
otherwise than regard Him as related in precisely 
the same way to every portion of His creation, look- 
ing with indifferent eyes upon misery and happiness, 
truth and error, vice and virtue, then our theology 
must surely drive us, under whatever disguise, to 
empty ethics of all ethical significance, and to re- 
duce virtue to a colourless acquiescence in the Ap- 
pointed Order. 

Systems there are which do not shrink from 
these speculative conclusions. But their authors 
will, I think, be found rather among those who ap- 
proach the problem of the world from the side of a 
particular metaphysic, than those who approach it 
from the side of science. He who sees in God no 
more than the Infinite Substance of which the 
world of phenomena constitutes the accidents, or 
who requires Him for no other purpose than as In- 



SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 3OI 

finite Subject, to supply the * unity ' without which 
the world of phenomena would be an ' unmeaning 
flux of unconnected particulars,' may naturally sup- 
pose Him to be equally related to everything, good 
or bad, that has been, is, or can be. But I do not 
think that the man of science is similarly situated ; 
for the doctrine of evolution has in this respect 
made a change in his position which, curiously 
enough, brings it closer to that occupied in this 
matter by theology and ethics than it was in the 
days when * special creation ' was the fashionable 
view. 

I am not contending, be it observed, that evolu- 
tion strengthens the evidence for theism. My point 
rather is, that if the existence of God be assumed, 
evolution does, to a certain extent, harmonise with 
that belief in His ' preferential action * which relig- 
ion and morality alike require us to attribute to 
Him. For whereas the material and organic world 
was once supposed to have been created 'all of a 
piece,' and to show contrivance on the part of its 
Author merely by the machine-like adjustment of its 
parts, so now science has adopted an idea which has 
always been an essential part of the Christian view 
of the Divine economy, has given to that idea an 
undreamed-of extension, has applied it to the whole 
universe of phenomena, organic and inorganic, and 
has returned it again to theology enriched, strength- 
ened, and developed. Can we, then, think of evolu- 
tion in a God-created world without attributing to 



302 SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 

its Author the notion of purpose slowly worked 
out ; the striving towards something which is not, 
but which gradually becomes, and in the fulness of 
time will be ? Surely not. But, if not, can it be 
denied that evolution — the evolution, I mean, which 
takes place in time,*the natural evolution of science, 
as distinguished from the dialectical evolution of 
metaphysics — does involve something in the nature 
of that * preferential action ' which it is so difficult 
to understand, yet so impossible to abandon ? 



CHAPTER IV 

SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 



But if I confined myself to saying that the belief 
in a God who is not merely ' substance/ or * sub- 
ject,' but is, in Biblical language, * a living God,*, af- 
fords no ground of quarrel between theology and 
science, I should much understate my thought. I 
hold, on the contrary, that some such presupposi- 
tion is not only tolerated, but is actually required, 
by science ; that if it be accepted in the case of 
science, it can hardly be refused in the case of 
ethics, aesthetics, or theology ; and that if it be thus 
accepted as a general principle, applicable to the 
whole circuit of belief, it will be found to provide 
us with a working solution of some, at least, of the 
difficulties with which naturalism is incompetent to 
deal. 

For what was it that lay at the bottom of those 
difficulties ? Speaking broadly, it may be described 
as the perpetual collision, the ineffaceable incon- 
gruity, between the origin of our beliefs, in so far 
as these can be revealed to us by science, and the 
beliefs themselves. This it was that, as I showed 



304 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

in the first part of this Essay, touched with the frost 
of scepticism our ideals of conduct and our ideals 
of beauty. This it was that, as I showed in the 
Second Part, cut down scientific philosophy to the 
root. And all the later discussions with which I 
have occupied the attention of the reader serve 
but to emphasise afresh the inextricable confusion 
which the naturalistic hypothesis introduces into 
every department of practice and of speculation, by 
refusing to allow us to penetrate beyond the phe- 
nomenal causes by which, in the order of Nature, 
our beliefs are produced. 

Review each of these departments in turn, and, 
in the light of the preceding discussion, compare its 
position in a theological setting with that which it 
necessarily occupies in a naturalistic one. Let the 
case of science be taken first, for it is a crucial one. 
Here, if anywhere, we might suppose ourselves in- 
dependent of theology. Here, if anywhere, we 
might expect to be able to acquiesce without embar- 
rassment in the negations of naturalism. But when 
once we have realised the scientific truth that at 
the root of every rational process lies an irrational 
one ; that reason, from a scientific point of view, is 
itself a natural product ; and that the whole mate- 
rial on which it works is due to causes, physical, 
physiological, and social, which it neither creates 
nor controls, we shall (as I showed just now) be 
driven in mere self-defence to hold that, behind 
these non-rational forces, and above them, guiding 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 30$ 

them by slow degrees, and, as it were, with diffi- 
culty, to a rational issue, stands that Supreme Rea- 
son in whom we must thus believe, if we are to be- 
lieve in anything. 

Here, then, we are plunged at once into the 
middle of theology. The belief in God, the attribu- 
tion to Him of reason, and of what I have called 
* preferential action ' in relation to the world which 
He has created, all seem forced upon us by the sin- 
gle assumption that science is not an illusion, and 
that, with the rest of its teaching, we must accept 
what it has to say to us about itself as a natural 
product. At no smaller cost can we reconcile the 
origins of science with its pretensions, or relieve 
ourselves of the embarrassments in which we are 
involved by a naturalistic theory of Nature. But 
evidently the admission, if once made, cannot stand 
alone. It is impossible to refuse to ethical beliefs 
what we have already conceded to scientific beliefs. 
For the analogy between them is complete. Both 
are natural products. Neither rank among their re- 
moter causes any which share their essence. And 
as it is easy to trace back our scientific beliefs to 
sources which have about them nothing which is 
rational, so it is easy to trace back our ethical be- 
liefs to sources which have about them nothing 
which is ethical. Both require us, therefore, to seek 
behind these phenomenal sources for some ultimate 
ground with which they shall be congruous ; and as 
we have been moved to postulate a rational God in 



306 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

the interests of science, so we can scarcely decline 
to postulate a moral God in the interests of moral- 
ity. 

But, manifestly, those who have gone thus far 
cannot rest here. If we are to assign a ' providen- 
tial ' origin to the long and complex train of events 
which have resulted in the recognition of a moral 
law, we must embrace within the same theory those 
sentiments and influences, without which a moral 
law would tend to become a mere catalogue of com- 
mandments, possessed, it may be, of an undisputed 
authority, but obtaining on that account but little 
obedience. This was the point on which I dwelt at 
length in the first portion of this Essay. I then 
showed, that if the pedigrees of conscience, of our 
ethical ideals, of our capacity for admiration, for 
sympathy, for repentance, for righteous indignation, 
were finally to lose themselves among the accidental 
variations on which Selection does its work, it was 
inconceivable that they should retain their virtue 
when once the creed of naturalism had thoroughly 
penetrated and discoloured every mood of thought 
and belief. But if, deserting naturalism, we regard 
the evolutionary process issuing in these ethical re- 
sults as an instrument for carrying out a Divine 
purpose, the natural history of the higher sentiments 
is seen under a wholly different light. They may 
be due, doubtless they are in fact due, to the same 
selective mechanism which produces the most cruel 
and the most disgusting of Nature's contrivances for 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 307 

protecting the species of some loathsome parasite. 
Between the two cases science cannot, and natural- 
ism will not, draw any valid distinction. But here 
theology steps in, and by the conception of design 
revolutionises our point of view. The most un- 
lovely germ of instinct or of appetite to which we 
trace back the origin of all that is most noble and of 
good report, no longer throws discredit upon its 
developed offshoots. Rather is it consecrated by 
them. For if, in the region of Causation, it is wholly 
by the earlier stages that the later are determined, 
in the region of Design it is only through the later 
stages that the earlier can be understood. 

But if these be the consequences which flow from 
substituting a theological for a naturalistic inter- 
pretation of science, of ethics, and of ethical senti- 
ments, what changes will the same process effect in 
our conception of aesthetics? Naturalism, as we 
saw, destroys the possibility of objective beauty — of 
beauty as a real, persistent quality of objects ; and 
leaves nothing but feelings of beauty on the one 
side, and on the other a miscellaneous assortment of 
objects, called beautiful in their moments of favour, 
by which, through the chance operation of obscure 
associations, at some period, and in some persons, 
these feelings of beauty are aroused. A conclusion 
of this kind no doubt leaves us chilled and depressed 
spectators of our own aesthetic enthusiasms. And 
it may be that to put the scientific theory in a theo- 
logical setting, instead of in a naturalistic one, will 



308 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

not wholly remove the unsatisfactory effect which 
the theory itself may leave upon the mind. And 
yet it surely does something. If we cannot say that 
Beauty is in any particular case an * objective ' fact, 
in the sense in which science requires us to believe 
that 'mass,' for example, and 'configuration,' are 
' objective ' facts, we are not precluded on that 
account from referring our feeling of it to God, nor 
from supposing that in the thrill of some deep emo- 
tion we have for an instant caught a far-off reflec- 
tion of Divine beauty. This is, indeed, my faith ; 
and in it the differences of taste which divide man^ 
kind lose all their harshness. For we may liken 
ourselves to the members of some endless proces- 
sion winding along the borders of a sunlit lake. 
Towards each individual there will shine along its 
surface a moving lane of splendour, where the 
ripples catch and deflect the light in his direction ; 
while on either hand the waters, which to his neigh- 
bour's eyes are brilliant in the sun, for him lie dull 
and undistinguished. So may all possess a like en- 
joyment of loveliness. So do all owe it to one un- 
changing Source. And if there be an endless 
variety in the immediate objects from which we 
severally derive it, I know not, after all, that this 
should furnish any matter for regret. 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 3O9 



II 



And, lastly, we come to theology, denied by 
naturalism to be a branch of knowledge at all, but 
whose truth we have been obliged to assume in 
order to find a basis for the only knowledge which 
naturalism allows. 

Those who are prepared to admit that, in dealing 
with the causes of scientific and ethical belief, the 
theory which offers least difficulty is that which 
assumes them to have been ' providentially ' guided, 
are not likely to raise objections to a similar theory 
in the case of religion. For here, at least, might we 
expect preferential Divine intervention, supposing 
such intervention were anywhere possible. Much 
more, then, if it be accepted as actual in other regions 
of belief. And this is, in fact, the ordinary view of 
mankind. They have almost always claimed for 
their beliefs about God that they were due to God. 
The belief in religion has almost always carried with 
it, in some shape or other, the belief in Inspiration. 

To this rule there is, no doubt, to be found an 
apparent exception in what is known as natural re- 
ligion — natural religion being defined as the religion 
to which unassisted reason may attain, in contrast 
to that which can be reached only by the aid of rev- 
elation. But, for my own part, I object altogether 
to the theory underlying this distinction. I do not 
believe that, strictly speaking, there is any such 



3IO A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

thing as ' unassisted reason.' And I am sure that if 
there be, the conclusions of ' natural religion * are not 
among its products. The attentive reader does not 
require to be told that, according to the views here 
advocated, every idea involved in such a proposition 
as that ' There is a moral Creator and Ruler of the 
world * (which I may assume, for purposes of illus- 
tration, to constitute the substance of natural re- 
ligion) is due to a complex of causes, of which human 
reason was not the most important ; and that this 
natural religion never would have been heard of, 
much less have been received with approval, had it 
not been for that traditional religion of which it 
vainly supposes itself to be independent. 

But if this way of considering the matter be ac- 
cepted ; if we are to apply unaltered, in the case of 
religious beliefs, the procedure already adopted in 
the case of scientific, ethical, and aesthetic beliefs, 
and assume for them a Cause harmonious with their 
essential nature, we must evidently in so doing trans- 
cend the common division between * natural ' and 
' supernatural.' We cannot consent to see the ' pref- 
erential working of Divine power' only in those 
religious manifestations which refuse to accommo- 
date themselves to our conception (whatever that 
may be) of the strictly * natural ' order of the world ; 
nor can we deny a Divine origin to those aspects of 
religious development which natural laws seem com- 
petent to explain. The familiar distinction, indeed, 
between ' natural ' and ' supernatural ' coincides 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 311 

neither with that between natural and spiritual, nor 
with that between ' preferential action ' and ' non- 
preferential,' nor with that between ' phenomenal ' 
and * noumenal.' It is, perhaps, less important than 
is sometimes supposed ; and in this particular con- 
nection, at all events, is, as it seems to me, merely 
irrelevant and confusing — a burden, not an aid, to 
religious speculation. 

For, whatever difference there may be between 
the growth of theological knowledge and of other 
knowledge, their resemblances are both numerous 
and instructive. In both we note that movement 
has been sometimes so rapid as to be revolutionary, 
sometimes so slow as to be imperceptible. In both, 
that it has been sometimes an advance, sometimes 
a retrogression. In both, that it has been some- 
times on lines permitting a long, perhaps an indefi- 
nite, development, sometimes in directions where far- 
ther progress seems barred for ever. In both, that 
the higher is, from the point of view of science, 
largely produced by the lower. In both, that, from 
the point of view of our provisional philosophy, the 
lower is only to be explained by the higher. In 
both, that the final product counts among its causes 
a vast multitude of physiological, psychological, 
political, and social antecedents with which it has no 
direct rational or spiritual affiliation. 

How, then, can we most completely absorb these 
facts into our theory of Inspiration ? It would, no 
doubt, be inaccurate to say that inspiration is that, 



312 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

seen from its Divine side, which we call discovery 
when seen from the human side. But it is not, I 
think, inaccurate to say that every addition to knowl- 
edge, whether in the individual or the community, 
whether scientific, ethical, or theological, is due to a 
co-operation between the human soul which assimi- 
lates and the Divine power which inspires. Neither 
acts, or, as far as we can pronounce upon such mat- 
ters, could act, in independent isolation. For ' un- 
assisted reason ' is, as I have already said, a fiction ; 
and pure receptivity it is impossible to conceive. 
Even the emptiest vessel must limit the quantity 
and determine the configuration of any liquid with 
which it may be filled. 

But because this view involves a use of the term 
' inspiration * which, ignoring all minor distinctions, 
extends it to every case in which the production of 
belief is due to the ' preferential action * of Divine 
power, it does not, of course, follow that minor dis- 
tinctions do not exist. All I wish here to insist on 
is, that the sphere of Divine influence in matters of 
belief exists as a whole, and may therefore be studied 
as a whole ; and that, not improbably, to study it as 
a whole would prove no unprofitable preliminary to 
any examination into the character of its more im- 
portant parts. 

So studied, it becomes evident that Inspiration, if 
this use of the word is to be allowed, is limited to no 
age, to no country, to no people. It is required by 
those who learn not less than bv those who teach. 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 313 

Wherever an approach has been made to truth, 
wherever anj^ individual soul has assimilated some 
old discovery, or has forced the secret of a new one, 
there is its co-operation to be discovered. Its work- 
ings are to be traced not merely in the later devel- 
opment of beliefs, but far back among their unhon- 
oured beginnings. Its aid has been granted not 
merely along the main line of religious progress, but 
in the side-alleys to which there seems no issue. 
Are we, for example, to find a full measure of inspi- 
ration in the highest utterances of Hebrew prophet 
or psalmist, and to suppose that the primitive relig- 
ious conceptions common to the Semitic race had in 
them no touch of the Divine ? Hardly, if we also 
believe that it was these primitive conceptions which 
the ' Chosen People ' were divinely ordained to pu- 
rify, to elevate, and to expand until they became 
fitting elements in a religion adequate to the neces- 
sities of a world. Are we, again, to deny any meas- 
ure of inspiration to the ethico-religious teaching of 
the great Oriental reformers, because there was 
that in their general systems of doctrine which pre- 
vented, and still prevents, these from merging as a 
whole in the main stream of religious advance ? 
Hardly, unless we are prepared to admit that men 
may gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles. 
These things assuredly are of God ; and whatever 
be the terms in which we choose to express our 
faith, let us not give colour to the opinion that His 
assistance to mankind has been narrowed down to 



314 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

the sources, however unique, from which we imme' 
diately, and consciously, draw our own spiritual 
nourishment. 

If a preference is shown by any for a more 
limited conception of the Divine intervention in 
matters of belief, it must, I suppose, be on one of 
two grounds. It may, in the first place, arise out 
of a natural reluctance to force into the same cate- 
gory the transcendent intuitions of prophet or 
apostle and the stammering utterances of earlier 
faiths, clouded as these are by human ignorance 
and marred by human sin. Things spiritually so far 
asunder ought not, it may be thought, by any sys- 
tem of classification, to be brought together. They 
belong to separate worlds. They differ not merely 
infinitely in degree, but absolutely in kind ; and a 
risk of serious error must arise if the same term is 
loosely and hastily applied to things which, in their 
essential nature, lie so far apart. 

Now, that there may be, or, rather, plainly are, 
many modes in which belief is assisted by Divine 
co-operation I have already admitted. That the 
word ' inspiration * may, with advantage, be con- 
fined to one or more of these I do not desire to 
deny. It is a question of theological phraseology, 
on which I am not competent to pronounce ; and if 
I have seized upon the word for the purposes of my 
argviment, it is with no desire to confound any dis- 
tinction which ought to be preserved, but because 
there is no other term which so pointedly expresses 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 315 

that Divine element in the formation of beliefs on 
which it was my business to lay stress. This, if my 
theory be true, does, after all, exist, howsoever it 
may be described, to the full extent which I have 
indicated ; and though the beliefs which it assists in 
producing differ infinitely from one another in their 
nearness to absolute truth, the fact is not disguised, 
nor the honour due to the most spiritually perfect 
utterances in aught imperilled, by recognising in 
all some marks of Divine intervention. 

But, in the second place, it may be objected that 
inspiration thus broadly conceived is incapable of 
providing mankind with any satisfactory criterion of 
religious truth. Since its co-operation can be traced 
in so much that is imperfect, the mere fact of its 
co-operation cannot in any particular case be a pro- 
tection even against gross error. If, therefore, we 
seek in it not merely a Divinely ordered cause of 
belief, but also a Divinely ordered ground for believ- 
ing, there must be some means of marking off those 
examples of its operation which rightfully command 
our full intellectual allegiance, from those which are 
no more than evidences of an influence towards the 
truth working out its purpose slowly through the 
ages. 

This is beyond dispute. Nothing that I have 
said about inspiration in general as a source of belief 
affects in any way the character of certain instances 
of inspiration as an authority for belief. Nor was 
it intended to do so ; for the problem, or group of 



3l6 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

problems, which would thus have been raised is 
altogether beside the main course of my argument. 
They belong, not to an Introduction to Theology, 
but to Theology itself. Whether there is an authority 
in religious matters of a kind altogether without 
parallel in scientific or ethical matters ; what, if it ex- 
ists, is its character, and whence come its claims to 
our obedience, are questions on which theologians 
have differed, and still differ, and which it is quite 
beyond my province to decide. For the subject of 
this Essay is the ' foundations of belief,' and, as I 
have already indicated,^ the kind of authority con- 
templated by theologians is never ' fundamental,' in 
the sense in which that word is here used. The 
deliverances of no organisation, of no individual, of 
no record, can lie at the roots of belief as reason, 
whatever they may do as cause. It is always possi- 
ble to ask whence these claimants to authority derive 
their credentials, what titles the organisation or the 
individual possesses to our obedience, whether the 
records are authentic, and what is their precise im- 
port. And the mere fact that such questions may 
be put, and that they can neither be thrust aside as 
irrelevant nor be answered without elaborate critical 
and historical discussion, shows clearly enough that 
we have no business with them here. 

^ See ante, chapter on Authority and Reason. 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 31/ 



III 



But although it is evidently beyond the scope 
of this work to enter upon even an elementary 
discussion of theological method, it seems right 
that I should endeavour, in strict continuation of 
the argument of this chapter, to say something on 
the source from which, according to Christianity, 
any religious authority whatever must ultimately 
derive its jurisdiction. What I have so far tried to 
establish is this — that the great body of our beliefs, 
scientific, ethical, theological, form a more coherent 
and satisfactory whole if we consider them in a 
Theistic setting, than if we consider them in a Nat- 
uralistic one. The further question, therefore, 
inevitably suggests itself. Whether we can carry the 
process a step further, and say that they are more 
coherent and satisfactory if considered in a Chris- 
tian setting than in a merely Theistic one ? 

The answer often given is in the negative. It is 
always assumed by those who do not accept the 
doctrine of the Incarnation, and it is not uncommonly 
conceded by those who do, that it constitutes an ad- 
ditional burden upon faith, a new stumbling-block 
to reason. And many who are prepared to accom- 
modate their beliefs to the requirements of (so-called) 
* Natural Religion,' shrink from the difficulties and 
perplexities in which this central mystery of Revealed 
Religion threatens to involve them. But what are 



3l8 -A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

these difficulties ? Clearly they are not scientific. 
We are here altogether outside the region where 
scientific ideas possess any worth, or scientific cate- 
gories claim any authority. It may be a realm of 
shadows, of empty dreams, and vain speculations. 
But whether it be this, or whether it be the abiding- 
place of the highest Reality, it evidently must be 
explored by methods other than those provided for 
us by the accepted canons of experimental research. 
Even when we are endeavouring to comprehend the 
relation of our own finite personalities to the material 
environment with which they are so intimately con- 
nected, we find, as we have seen, that all familiar 
modes of explanation break down and become mean- 
ingless. Yet we certainly exist, and presumably we 
have bodies. If, then, we cannot devise formulae 
which shall elucidate the familiar mystery of our 
daily existence, we need neither be surprised nor 
embarrassed if the unique mystery of the Christian 
faith refuses to lend itself to inductive treatment. 

But though the very uniqueness of the doctrine 
places it beyond the ordinary range of scientific 
criticism, the same cannot be said for the historical 
evidence on which, in part at least, it rests. Here, 
it will perhaps be urged, we are on solid and familiar 
ground. We have only got to ignore the arbitrary 
distinction between ' sacred ' and ' secular,' and apply 
the well-understood methods of historic criticism to 
a particular set of ancient records, in order to extract 
from them all that is necessary to satisfy our curi- 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 319 

osity. If they break down under cross-examination, 
we need trouble ourselves no further about the 
metaphysical dogmas to which they point. No im- 
munity or privilege claimed for the subject-matter 
of belief can extend to the merely human evidence 
adduced in its support ; and as in the last resort the 
historical element in Christianity does evidently rest 
on human testimony, nothing can be simpler than to 
subject this to the usual scientific tests, and accept 
with what equanimity we may any results which 
they elicit. 

But, in truth, the question is not so simple as 
those who make use of arguments like these would 
have us suppose. ' Historic method ' has its limita- 
tions. It is self-sufficient only within an area which 
is, indeed, tolerably extensive, but which does not 
embrace the universe. For, without taking any very 
deep plunge into the philosophy of historical criti- 
cism, we may easily perceive that our judgment as 
to the truth or falsity of any particular historic state- 
ment depends, partly on our estimate of the writer's 
trustworthiness, partly on our estimate of his means 
of information, partly on our estimate of the intrin- 
sic probability of the facts to which he testifies. But 
these things are not ' independent variables,' to be 
measured separately before their results are balanced 
and summed up. On the contrary, it is manifest 
that, in many cases, our opinion on the trustworthi- 
ness and competence of the witnesses is modified by 
v\-v opinion as to the inherent likelihood of what 



320 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

they tell us ; and that our opinion as to the inherent 
likelihood of what they tell us may depend on 
considerations with respect to which no historical 
method is able to give us any conclusive informa- 
tion. In most cases, no doubt, these questions of 
antecedent probability have to be themselves de- 
cided solely, or mainly, on historic grounds, and, fail- 
ing anything more scientific, by a kind of historic 
instinct. But other cases there are, though they be 
rare, to whose consideration we must bring larger 
principles, drawn from a wider theory of the world ; 
and among these should be counted as first, both in 
speculative interest and in ethical importance, the 
early records of Christianity. 

That this has been done, and, from their own 
point of view, quite rightly done, by various de- 
structive schools of New Testament criticism, every- 
one is aware. Starting from a philosophy which for- 
bade them to accept much of the substance of the 
Gospel narrative, they very properly set to work to 
devise a variety of hypotheses which would account 
for the fact that the narrative, with all its peculiari- 
ties, was nevertheless there. Of these hypotheses 
there are many, and some of them have occasioned 
an admirable display of erudite ingenuity, fruitful 
of instruction from every point of view, and for all 
time. But it is a great, though common, error to 
describe these learned efforts as examples of the un- 
biassed application of historic methods to historic 
documents. It would be more correct to saj that 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 321 

they are endeavours, by the unstinted employment 
of an elaborate critical apparatus, to force the testi- 
mony of existing records into conformity with the- 
ories on the truth or falsity of which it is for philos- 
ophy, not history, to pronounce. What view I take of 
the particular philosophy to which these critics make 
appeal the reader already knows ; and our immediate 
concern is not again to discuss the presuppositions 
with which other people have approached the con- 
sideration of New Testament history, but to arrive at 
some conclusion about our own. 

How, then, ought the general theory of things at 
which we have arrived to affect our estimate of the 
antecedent probability of the Christian views of 
Christ ? Or, if such a phrase as ' antecedent proba- 
bility ' be thought to suggest a much greater nicety 
of calculation than is at all possible in a case like 
this, in what temper of mind, in what mood of ex- 
pectation, ought our provisional philosophy to in- 
duce us to consider the extant historic evidence for 
the Christian story ? The reply must, I think, de- 
pend, as I shall show in a moment, upon the view 
we take of the ethical import of Christianity ; while 
its ethical import, again, must depend on the degree 
to which it ministers to our ethical needs. 



322 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 



IV 



Now ethical needs, important though they are, 
occupy no great space, as a rule, in the works of 
ethical writers. I do not say this by way of criti- 
cism ; for I grant that any examination into these 
needs would have only an indirect bearing on the 
essential subject-matter of ethical philosophy, since 
no inquiry into their nature, history, or value would 
help either to establish the fundamental principles 
of a moral code or to elaborate its details. But, 
after all, as I have said before, an assortment of 
* categorical imperatives,' however authoritative and 
complete, supplies but a meagre outfit wherewith to 
meet the storms and stresses of actual experience. 
If we are to possess a practical system, which shall 
not merely tell men what they ought to do, but 
assist them to do it ; still more, if we are to regard 
the spiritual quality of the soul as possessing an in- 
trinsic value not to be wholly measured by the ex- 
ternal actions to which it gives rise, much more 
than this will be required. It will not only be 
necessary to claim the assistance of those ethical 
aspirations and ideals which are not less effectual 
for their purpose though nothing corresponding to 
them should exist, but it will also be necessary, if 
it be possible, to meet those ethical needs which 
must work more harm than good unless we can 
sustain the belief that there is somewhere to be 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 323 

found a Reality wherein they can find their satis- 
faction. 

These are facts of moral psychology which, thus 
broadly stated, nobody, I think, will be disposed to 
dispute, although the widest differences of opinion 
may and do prevail as to the character, number, and 
relative importance of the ethical needs thus called 
into existence by ethical commands. It is, further, 
certain, though more difficulty may be felt in ad- 
mitting it, that these needs can be satisfied in many 
cases but imperfectly, in some cases not at all, with- 
out the aid of theology and of theological sanctions. 
One commonly recognised ethical need, for exam- 
ple, is for harmony between the interests of the in- 
dividual and those of the community. In a rude 
and limited fashion, and for a very narrow circle of 
ethical commands, this is deliberately provided by 
the prison and the scaffold, the whole machinery of 
the criminal law. It is provided, with less delibera- 
tion, but with greater delicacy of adjustment, and 
over a wider area of duty, by the operation of pub- 
lic opinion. But it can be provided, with any ap- 
proach to theoretical perfection, only by a future 
life, such as that which is assumed in more than one 
system of religious belief. 

Now the question is at once suggested by cases 
of this kind whether, and, if so, under what limita- 
tions, we can argue from the existence of an ethical 
need to the reality of the conditions under which 
alone it would be satisfied. Can we, for example, 



324 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

argue from the need for some complete correspond, 
ence between virtue and felicity, to the reality of 
another world than this, where such a correspond- 
ence will be completely effected ? A great ethical 
philosopher has, in substance, asserted that we can. 
He held that the reality of the Moral Law implied 
the reality of a sphere where it could for ever be 
obeyed, under conditions satisfactory to the ' Practi- 
cal Reason ' ; and it was thus that he found a place 
in his system for Freedom, for Immortality, and for 
God. The metaphysical machinery, indeed, by which 
Kant endeavoured to secure these results is of a kind 
which we cannot employ. But we may well ask 
whether somewhat similar inferences are not fitting 
portions of the provisional philosophy I am endeav- 
ouring to recommend ; and, in particular, whether 
they do not harmonise with the train of thought we 
have been pursuing in the course of this Chapter. 
If the reality of scientific and of ethical knowledge 
forces us to assume the existence of a rational and 
moral Deity, by whose preferential assistance they 
have gradually come into existence, must we not 
suppose that the Power which has thus produced 
in man the knowledge of right and wrong, and 
has added to it the faculty of creating ethical ideals, 
must have provided some satisfaction for the ethical 
needs which the historical development of the spirit- 
ual life has gradually called into existence ? 

Manifestly the argument in this shape is one 
which must be used with caution. To reason purely 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 325 

a priori from our general notions concerning the 
working of Divine Providence to the reality of 
particular historic events in time, or to the preva- 
lence of particular conditions of existence through 
eternity, would imply a knowledge of Divine mat- 
ters which we certainly do not possess, and which, 
our faculties remaining what they are, a revelation 
Irom Heaven could not, I suppose, communicate to 
us. My contention, at all events, is of a much 
humbler kind. I confine myself to asking whether, 
in a universe which, by hypothesis, is under moral 
governance, there is not a presumption in favour of 
facts or events which minister, if true, to our highest 
moral demands ? and whether such a presumption, 
if it exists, is not sufficient, and more than sufficient, 
to neutralise the counter -presumption which has 
uncritically governed so much of the criticism di- 
rected in recent times against the historic claims 
of Christianity ? For my own part, I cannot doubt 
that both these questions should be answered in 
the affirmative ; and if the reader will consider the 
variety of ways by which Christianity is, in fact, 
fitted effectually to minister to our ethical needs, I 
find it hard to believe that he will arrive at any dif- 
ferent conclusion. 



326 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 



I need not say that no complete treatment of 
this question is contemplated here. Any adequate 
survey of the relation in which Christianity stands 
to the moral needs of man would lead us into the 
very heart of theology, and would require us to con- 
sider topics altogether unsuited to these controver- 
sial pages. Yet it may, perhaps, be found possible 
to illustrate my meaning without penetrating far 
into territories more properly occupied by theo- 
logians; while, at the same time, the examples of 
which I shall make use may serve to show that, 
among the needs ministered to by Christianity, 
are some which increase rather than diminish 
with the growth of knowledge and the progress 
of science ; and that this Religion is therefore 
no mere reform, appropriate only to a vanished 
epoch in the history of culture and civilisation, 
but a development of theism now more necessary 
to us than ever. 

I am aware, of course, that this may seem in 
strange discord with opinions very commonly held. 
There are many persons who suppose that, in addi- 
tion to any metaphysical or scientific objections to 
Christian doctrines, there has arisen a legitimate 
feeling of intellectual repulsion to them, directly 
due to our more extended perception of the magni- 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 327 

tude and complexity of the material worid. The 
discovery of Copernicus, it has been said, is the 
death-blow to Christianity: in other words, the 
recognition by the human race of the insignificant 
part which they and their planet play in the cosmic 
drama renders the Incarnation, as it were, intrinsi- 
cally incredible. This is not a question of logic, or 
science, or history. No criticism of documents, no 
haggling over ' natural ' or ' supernatural,' either 
creates the difficulty or is able to solve it. For it 
arises out of what I may almost call an aesthetic 
sense of disproportion. ' What is man, that Thou 
art mindful of him ; and the son of man, that Thou 
visitest him ? * is a question charged by science 
with a weight of meaning far beyond what it could 
have borne for the poet whose lips first uttered 
it. And those whose studies bring perpetually to 
their remembrance the immensity of this material 
world, who know how brief and how utterly im- 
perceptible is the impress made by organic life in 
general, and by human life in particular, upon the 
mighty forces which surround them, find it hard 
to believe that on so small an occasion this petty 
satellite of no very important sun has been chosen 
as the theatre of an event so solitary and so stu- 
pendous. 

Reflection, indeed, shows that those who thus 
argue have manifestly permitted their thoughts 
about God to be controlled by a singular theory of 
His relations to man and to the world, based on an 



328 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

unbalanced consideration of the vastness of Nature. 
They have conceived Him as moved by the mass of 
His own works ; as lost in spaces of His own crea- 
tion. Consciously or unconsciously, they have fallen 
into the absurdity of supposing that He considers 
His creatures, as it were, with the eyes of a con- 
tractor or a politician ; that He measures their 
value according to their physical or intellectual im- 
portance ; and that He sets store by the number 
of square miles they inhabit or the foot-pounds of 
energy they are capable of developing. In truth, 
the inference they should have drawn is of precise- 
ly the opposite kind. The very sense of the place 
occupied in the material universe by man the in- 
telligent animal, creates in man the moral being a 
new need for Christianity, which, before science 
measured out the heavens for us, can hardly be 
said to have existed. Metaphysically speaking, our 
opinions on the magnitude and complexity of the 
natural world should, indeed, have no bearing on 
our conception of God's relation, either to us or 
to it. Though we supposed the sun to have been 
created some six thousand years ago, and to be 
' about the size of the Peloponnesus,' yet the funda- 
mental problems concerning time and space, matter 
and spirit, God and man, would not on that account 
have to be formally restated. But then, we are not 
creatures of pure reason ; and those who desire the 
assurance of an intimate and effectual relation with 
the Divine life, and who look to this for strength 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 329 

and consolation, find that the progress of scientific 
knoAvledge makes it more and more difficult to ob- 
tain it by the aid of any merely speculative theism. 
The feeling of trusting dependence which was easy 
for the primitive tribes, who regarded themselves 
as their God's peculiar charge, and supposed Him 
in some special sense to dwell among them, is not 
easy for us ; nor does it tend to become easier. We 
can no longer share their naive anthropomorphism. 
We search out God with eyes grown old in study- 
ing Nature, with minds fatigued by centuries of 
metaphysic, and imaginations glutted with material 
infinities. It is in vain that we describe Him as im- 
manent in creation, and refuse to reduce Him to an 
abstraction, be it deistic or be it pantheistic. The 
overwhelming force and regularity of the great nat- 
ural movements dull the sharp impression of an 
ever-present Personality deeply concerned in our 
spiritual well-being. He is hidden, not revealed, in 
the multitude of phenomena, and as our knowledge 
of phenomena increases. He retreats out of ail real- 
ised connection with us farther and yet farther into 
the illimitable unknown. 

Then it is that, through the aid of Christian doc- 
trine, we are saved from the distorting influences 
of our own discoveries. The Incarnation throws 
the whole scheme of things, as we are too easily apt 
to represent it to ourselves, into a different and far 
truer proportion. It abruptly changes the whole 
scale on which we might be disposed to measure 



330 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

the magnitudes of the universe. What we should 
otherwise think great, we now perceive to be rela- 
tively small. What we should otherwise think 
trifling, we now know to be immeasurably impor- 
tant. And the change is not only morally needed, 
but is philosophically justified. Speculation by it- 
self should be sufficient to convince us that, in the 
sight of a righteous God, material grandeur and 
moral excellencies are incommensurable quantities ; 
and that an infinite accumulation of the one cannot 
compensate for the smallest diminution of the other. 
Vet I know not whether, as a theistic speculation, 
this truth could effectually maintain itself against 
the brute pressure of external Nature. In the world 
looked at by the light of simple theism, the evi- 
dences of God's material power lie about us on 
every side, daily added to by science, universal, 
overwhelming. The evidences of His moral inter- 
est have to be anxiously extracted, grain by grain, 
through the speculative analysis of our moral nature. 
Mankind, however, are not given to speculative 
analysis ; and if it be desirable that they should 
be enabled to obtain an imaginative grasp of this 
great truth ; if they need to have brought home to 
them that, in the sight of God, the stability of the 
heavens is of less importance than the moral growth 
of a human spirit, I know not how this end could be 
more completely attained than by the Christian doc- 
trine of the Incarnation. 

A somewhat similar train of thought is suggested 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 33 1 

by the progress of one particular branch of scien. 
tific investigation. Mankind can never have been 
ignorant of the dependence of mind on body. The 
feebleness of infancy, the decay of age, the effects 
of sickness, fatigue, and pain, are facts too obvious 
and too insistent ever to have passed unnoticed. 
But the movement of discovery has prodigiously 
emphasised our sense of dependence on matter. We 
now know that it is no loose or variable connection 
which ties mind to body. There may, indeed, be 
neural changes which do not issue in consciousness ; 
but there is no consciousness, so far as accepted 
observations and experiments can tell us, which is 
not associated with neural changes. Looked at, 
therefore, from the outside, from the point of view 
necessarily adopted by the biologist, the psychic 
life seems, as it were, but an intermittent phospho- 
rescence accompanying the cerebral changes in 
certain highly organised mammals. And science, 
through countless channels, with irresistible force 
drives home to each one of us the lesson that we are 
severally bound over in perpetual servitude to a 
body for whose existence and qualities we have no 
responsibility whatever. 

As the reader is well aware, views like these 
will not stand critical examination. Of all creeds, 
materialism is the one which, looked at from the 
inside — from the point of view of knowledge and 
the knowing Self — is least capable of being philo- 
sophically defended, or even coherently stated. 



332 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

Nevertheless, the burden of the body is not, in 
practice, to be disposed of by any mere process of 
critical analysis. From birth to death, without 
pause or respite, it encumbers us on our path. We 
can never disentangle ourselves from its meshes, 
nor divide with it the responsibility for our joint 
performances. Conscience may tell us that we 
ought to control it, and that we can. But science, 
hinting that, after all, we are but its product and its 
plaything, receives ominous support from our ex- 
periences of mankind. Philosophy may assure us 
that the account of body and mind given by mate- 
rialism is neither consistent nor intelligible. Yet 
body remains the most fundamental and all-pervad- 
ing fact with which mind has got to deal, the one 
from which it can least easily shake itself free, the 
one that most complacently lends itself to every 
theory destructive of high endeavour. 

Now, what is wanted here is not abstract specu- 
lation or negative dialectic. These, indeed, may 
lend us their aid, but they are not very powerful 
allies in this particular species of warfare. They 
can assure us, with a well-grounded confidence, that 
materialism is wrong, but they have (as I think) 
nothing satisfactory to put in its place, and cannot 
pretend to any theoretic explanation which shall 
cover all the facts. What we need, then, is some- 
thing that shall appeal to men of flesh and blood, 
struggling with the temptations and discourage- 
ments which flesh and blood is heir to : confused 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 333 

and baffled by theories of heredity: sure that the 
physiological view represents at least one aspect of 
the truth ; not sure how any larger and more con- 
soling truth can be welded on to it; yet swayed 
towards the materialist side less, it may be, by 
materialist reasoning than by the inner confirma- 
tion which a humiliating experience gives them of 
their own subjection to the body. 

What support does the belief in a Deity inef- 
fably remote from all human conditions bring to 
men thus hesitating whether they are to count 
themselves as beasts that perish, or among the Sons 
of God ? What bridge can be found to span the 
immeasurable gulf which separates Infinite Spirit 
from creatures who seem little more than physi- 
ological accidents ? What faith is there, other than 
the Incarnation, which will enable us to realise that, 
however far apart, they are not hopelessly divided ? 
The intellectual perplexities which haunt us in 
that dim region where mind and matter meet may 
not be thus allayed. But they who think with me 
that, though it is a hard thing for us to believe that 
we are made in the likeness of God, it is yet a very 
necessary thing, will not be anxious to deny that an 
effectual trust in this great truth, a full satisfaction 
of this ethical need, are among the natural fruits of 
a Christian theory of the world. 

One more topic there is, of the same family as 
those with which we have just been dealing, to 
which, before concluding, I must briefly direct the 



334 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

reader's attention. I have already said something 
about what is known as the 'problem of evil,' and 
the immemorial difficulty which it throws in the way 
of a completely coherent theory of the world on a 
religious or moral basis. I do not suggest now 
that the doctrine of the Incarnation supplies any 
philosophic solution of this difficulty. I content 
myself with pointing out that the difficulty is much 
less oppressive under the Christian than under any 
simpler form of Theism ; and that though it may re- 
tain undiminished whatever speculative force it pos- 
sesses, its moral grip is loosened, and it no longer 
parches up the springs of spiritual hope or crushes 
moral aspiration. 

For where precisely does the difficulty lie? It 
lies in the supposition that an all-powerful Deity 
has chosen out of an infinite, or at least an unknown, 
number of possibilities to create a world in which 
pain is a prominent, and apparently an ineradicable, 
element. His action on this view is, so to speak, 
gratuitous. He might have done otherwise; He 
has done thus. He might have created sentient 
beings capable of nothing but happiness ; He has in 
fact created them prone to misery, and subject by 
their very constitution and circumstances to extreme 
possibilities of physical pain and mental affliction. 
How can One of Whom this can be said excite our 
love ? How can He claim our obedience ? How 
can He be a fitting object of praise, reverence, and 
worship? So runs the familiar argument, accepted 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 335 

by some as a permanent element in their melancholy 
philosophy ; wrung from others as a cry of anguish 
under the sudden stroke of bitter experience. 

This reasoning is in essence an explication of 
what is supposed to be involved in the attribute of 
Omnipotence ; and the sting of its conclusion lies in 
the inferred indifference of God to the sufferings of 
His creatures. There are, therefore, two points at 
which it may be assailed. We may argue, in the 
first place, that in dealing with subjects so far above 
our reach, it is in general the height of philosophic 
temerity to squeeze out of every predicate the last 
significant drop it can apparently be forced to yield ; 
or drive all the arguments it suggests to their ex- 
treme logical conclusions. And, in particular, it 
may be urged that it is erroneous, perhaps even 
unmeaning, to say that the universality of Omnip- 
otence includes the power to do that which is ir- 
fational; and that, without knowing the Whole, we 
cannot say of any part whether it is rational or 
not. 

These are metaphysical considerations which, so 
long as they are used critically, and not dogmatically, 
negatively, not positively, seem to me to have force. 
But there is a second line of attack, on which it is 
more my business to insist. I have already pointed 
out that ethics cannot permanently flourish side by 
side with a creed which represents God as indifferent 
to pain and sin ; so that, if our provisional philoso- 
phy is to include morality within its circuit (and 



336 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

what harmony of knowledge would that be which 
did not ?), the conclusions which apparently follow 
from the co-existence of Omnipotence and of Evil 
are not to be accepted. Yet this speculative reply 
is, after all, but a fair-weather argument ; too abstract 
easily to move mankind at large, too frail for the sup- 
port, even of a philosopher, in moments of extrem- 
ity. Of what use is it to those who, under the stress 
of sorrow, are permitting themselves to doubt the 
goodness of God, that such doubts must inevitably 
tend to wither virtue at the root ? No such conclu- 
sion will frighten them. They have already almost 
reached it. Of what worth, they cry, is virtue in a 
world where sufferings like theirs fall alike on the 
just and on the unjust? For themselves, they know 
only that they are solitary and abandoned ; victims 
of a Power too strong for them to control, too callous 
for them to soften, too far for them to reach, deaf to 
supplication, blind to pain. Tell them, with certain 
theologians, that their misfortunes are explained and 
justified by an hereditary taint ; tell them, with certain 
philosophers, that, could they understand the world 
in its completeness, their agony would show itself 
an element necessary to the harmony of the Whole, 
and they will think you are mocking them. What- 
ever be the worth of speculations like these, it is not 
in the moments when they are most required that 
they come effectually to our rescue. What is needed 
is such a living faith in God's relation to Man as 
shall leave no place for that helpless resentment 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 337 

against the appointed Order so apt to rise within us 
at the sight of undeserved pain. And this faith is 
possessed by those who vividly realise the Christian 
form of Theism. For they worship One who is no 
remote contriver of a universe to whose ills He is 
indifferent. If they suffer, did He not on their 
account suffer also ? If suffering falls not always on 
the most guilty, was He not innocent? Shall they 
cry aloud that the world is ill-designed for their 
convenience, when He for their sakes subjected 
Himself to its conditions? It is true that beliefs 
like these do not in any narrow sense resolve our 
doubts nor provide us with explanations. But they 
give us something better than many explanations. 
For they minister, or rather the Reality behind them 
ministers, to one of our deepest ethical needs : to a 
need which, far from showing signs of diminution, 
seems to grow with the growth of civilisation, and 
to touch us ever more keenly as the hardness of an 
earlier time dissolves away. 



Here, then, on the threshold of Christian Theol- 
ogy, I bring my task to a conclusion. I feel, on 
looking back over the completed work, even more 
strongly than I felt during its progress, how hard 
was the task I have undertaken, and how far beyond 
my powers successfully to accomplish. For I have 
aimed at nothing less than to show, within a reason- 



338 A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 

able compass and in a manner to be understood by 
all, how, in face of the complex tendencies which 
sway this strange age of ours, we may best draw to- 
gether our beliefs into a comprehensive unity which 
shall possess at least a relative and provisional sta- 
bility. In so bold an attempt I may well have failed. 
Yet, whatever be the particular weaknesses and de- 
fects which mar the success of my endeavours, three 
or four broad principles emerge from the discussion, 
the essential importance of which I find it impos- 
sible to doubt, whatever errors I may have made 
in their application. 

1. It seems beyond question that any system 
which, with our present knowledge and, it may 
be, our existing faculties, we are able to construct 
must suffer from obscurities, from defects of proof, 
and from incoherences. Narrow it down to bare 
science — and no one has seriously proposed to re- 
duce it further — you will still find all three, and in 
plenty. 

2. No unification of belief of the slightest the- 
oretical value can take place on a purely scien- 
tific basis — on a basis, I mean, of induction from 
particular experiences, whether ' external * or ' inter- 
nal.* 

3. No philosophy or theory of knowledge (epis- 
temology) can be satisfactory which does not find 
room within it for the quite obvious, but not suffi- 
ciently considered fact that, so far as empirical 
science can tell us anything about the matter,, most 



A PROVISIONAL UNIFICATION 339 

of the proximate causes of belief, and all its ultimate 
causes, are non-rational in their character. 

4. No unification of beliefs can be practically 
adequate which does not include ethical beliefs as 
well as scientific ones ; nor which refuses to count 
among ethical beliefs, not merely those which have 
immediate reference to moral commands, but those 
also which make possible moral sentiments, ideals 
and aspirations, and which satisfy our ethical needs. 
Any system which, when worked out to its legiti- 
mate issues, fails to effect this object can afford no 
permanent habitation for the spirit of man. 

To enforce, illustrate, and apply these principles 
has been the main object of the preceding pages. 
How far I have succeeded in showing that the least 
incomplete unification open to us must include the 
fundamental elements of Theology, and of Chris- 
tian Theology, I leave it for others to deter- 
mine ; repeating only the conviction, more than 
once expressed in the body of this Essay, that it is 
not explanations which survive, but the things 
which are explained ; not theories, but the things 
about which we theorise; and that, therefore, no 
failure on my part can imperil the great truths, be 
they religious, ethical, or scientific, whose interde- 
pendence I have endeavoured to establish. 



APPENDIX 

BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 



It may be useful to add to the preceding argu- 
ment on the foundations of belief some observations 
on the formal side of their historical development, 
which will not only serve, I hope, to make clearer 
the general scheme here advocated, but may help to 
solve certain difficulties which have sometimes been 
felt in the interpretation of theological and ecclesi- 
astical history. 

Assuming, as we do, that Knowledge exists, we 
can hardly do otherwise than make the further as- 
sumption that it has grown and must yet further 
grow. In what manner, then, has that growth been 
accomplished ? What are the external signs of its 
successive stages, the marks of its gradual evolution ? 
One, at least, must strike all who have surveyed, 
even with a careless eye, the course of human specu- 
lation — I mean the recurring process by which the 
explanations or explanatory formulas in terms of 



342 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

which mankind endeavour to comprehend the uni- 
verse are formed, are shattered, and then in some 
new shape are formed again. It is not, as we some- 
times represent it, by the steady addition of tier to 
tier that the fabric of knowledge uprises from its 
foundation. It is not by mere accumulation of 
material, nor even by a plant-like development, that 
our beliefs grow less inadequate to the truths which 
they strive to represent. Rather are we like one 
who is perpetually engaged in altering some ancient 
dwelling in order to satisfy new-born needs. The 
ground-plan of it is being perpetually modified. We 
build here ; we pull down there. One part is kept 
in repair, another part is suffered to decay. And 
even those portions of the structure which may in 
themselves appear quite unchanged, stand in such 
new relations to the rest, and are put to such differ- 
ent uses, that they would scarce be recognised by 
their original designer. 

Yet even this metaphor is inadequate, and per- 
haps misleading. We shall more accurately conceive 
the true history of knowledge if we represent it under 
the similitude of a plastic body whose shape and size 
are in constant process of alteration through the 
operation both of external and of internal forces. The 
internal forces are those of reason. The external 
forces correspond to those non-rational causes on 
whose importance I have already dwelt. Each of 
these agencies may be supposed to act both by way 
of destruction and of addition. By their joint oper- 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 343 

ation new material is deposited at one point, old 
material is eroded at another ; and the whole mass, 
whose balance has been thus disturbed, is constantly 
changing its configuration and settling towards a 
new position of equilibrium, which it may approach, 
but can never quite attain. 

We must not, however, regard this body of be- 
liefs as being equally mobile in all its parts. Certain 
elements in it have the power of conferring on the 
whole something in the nature of a definite struct- 
ure. These are known as * theories,' ' hypotheses,' 
' generalisations,' and * explanatory formulas ' in gen- 
eral. They represent beliefs by which other beliefs 
are co-ordinated. They supply the framework in 
which the rest of knowledge is arranged. Their 
right construction is the noblest work of reason ; and 
without their aid reason, if it could be exercised at 
all, would itself be driven from particular to particu- 
lar in helpless bewilderment. 

Now the action and reaction between these for- 
mulas and their contents is the most salient, and in 
some respects the most interesting, fact in the his- 
tory of thought. Called into being, for the most part, 
to justify, or at least to organise, pre-existing beliefs, 
they can seldom perform their office without modi- 
fying part, at least, of their material. While they 
give precision to what would otherwise be indeter- 
minate, and a relative permanence to what would oth- 
erwise be in a state of flux, they do so at the cost of 
some occasional violence to the beliefs with which 



344 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

they deal. Some of these are distorted to make 
them fit into their predestined niches. Others, more 
refractory, are destroyed or ignored. Even in sci- 
ence, where the beliefs that have to be accounted for 
have often a native vigour born of the imperious 
needs of sense-perception, we are sometimes dis- 
posed to see, not so much what is visible, as what 
theory informs us ought to be seen. While in the 
region of aesthetic (to take another example), where 
belief is of feebler growth, the inclination to admire 
what squares with some current theory of the beau- 
tiful, rather than with what appeals to any real feel- 
ing for beauty, is so common that it has ceased even 
to amuse. 

But this reaction of formulas on the beliefs which 
they co-ordinate or explain is but the first stage in 
the process we are describing. The next is the 
change, perhaps even the destruction, of the for- 
mula itself by the victorious forces that it has pre- 
viously held in check. The plastic body of belief, 
or some portion of it, under the growing stress of 
external and internal influences, breaks through, it 
may be with destructive violence, the barriers by 
which it was at one time controlled. A new theory 
has to be formed, a new arrangement of knowl- 
edge has to be accepted, and under changed con- 
ditions the same cycle of not unfruitful changes 
begins again. 

I do not know that any illustration of this famil- 
iar process is required, for in truth such examples 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 345 

are abundant in every department of Knowledge. 
As chalk consists of little else but the remains of 
dead animalculae, so the history of thought consists 
of little else but an accumulation of abandoned ex- 
planations. In that vast cemetery every thrust of the 
shovel turns up some bone that once formed part of 
a living theory ; and the biography of most of these 
theories would, I think, confirm the general account 
which I have given of their birth, maturity, and 
decay. 



II 



Now we may well suppose that under existing 
circumstances death is as necessary in the intellect- 
ual world as it is in the organic. It may not always 
result in progress, but without it, doubtless, prog- 
ress would be impossible ; and if, therefore, the 
constant substitution of one explanation for another 
could be effected smoothly, and as it were in silence, 
without disturbing anything beyond the explana- 
tions themselves, it need cause in general neither 
anxiety nor regret. But, unfortunately, in the case 
of Theology, this is not always the way things hap- 
pen. There, as elsewhere, theories arise, have their 
day, and fall ; but there, far more than elsewhere, do 
these theories in their fall endanger other interests 
than their own. More than one reason may be given 
for this difference. To begin with, in Science the 
beliefs of sense-perception, which, as I have implied, 



346 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

are commonly vigorous enough to resist the warp- 
ing effect of theory, even when the latter is in its 
full strength, are not imperilled by its decay. They 
provide a solid nucleus of unalterable conviction, 
which survives uninjured through all the mutations 
of intellectual fashion. We do not require the as- 
sistance of hypotheses to sustain our faith in what 
we see and hear. Speaking broadly, that faith is 
unalterable and self-sufficient. 

Theology is less happily situated. There it often 
happens that when a theory decays, the beliefs to 
which it refers are infected by a contagious weak- 
ness. The explanation and the thing explained are 
mutually dependent. They are animated as it were 
with a common life, and there is always a danger 
lest they should be overtaken by a common de- 
struction. 

Consider this difference between Science and 
Theology in the light of the following illustration. 
The whole instructed world were quite recently 
agreed that heat was a form of matter. With equal 
unanimity they now hold that it is a mode of motion. 
These opinions are not only absolutely inconsistent, 
but the change from one to the other is revolution- 
ary, and involves the profoundest modification of 
our general views of the material world. Yet no 
one's confidence in the existence of some quality in 
things by which his sensations of warmth are pro- 
duced is thereby disturbed ; and we may hold either 
of these theories, or both of them in turn, or no 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 347 

theory at all, without endangering the stability of 
our scientific faith. 

Compare with this example drawn from physics 
one of a very different kind drawn from theology. 
If there be a spiritual experience to which the his- 
tory of religion bears witness, it is that of Recon- 
ciliation with God. If there be an ' objective ' cause 
to which the feeling is confidently referred, it is to 
be found in the central facts of the Christian story. 
Now, incommensurable as the subject is with that 
touched on in the last paragraph, they resemble 
each other at least in this — that both have been the 
theme of much speculation, and that the accounts 
of them which have satisfied one generation, to an- 
other have seemed profitless and empty. But there 
the likeness ends. In the physical case, the feeling 
of heat and the inward assurance that it is really 
connected with some quality in the external body 
from which we suppose ourselves to derive it, sur- 
vive every changing speculation as to the nature of 
that quality and the mode of its operation. In the 
spiritual case, the sense of Reconciliation connected 
by the Christian conscience with the life and death 
of Christ seems in many cases to be bound up with 
the explanations of the mystery which from time to 
time have been hazarded by theological theorists. 
And as these explanations have fallen out of favour, 
the truth to be explained has too often been aban- 
doned also. 

This is not the place to press the subject further; 



34B BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

and I have neither the right in these Notes to as- 
sume the truth of particular theological doctrines, 
nor is it my business to attempt to prove them. But 
this much more I may perhaps be allowed to say by 
way of parenthesis. If the point of view which this 
Essay is intended to recommend be accepted, the 
precedent set, in the first of the above examples, by 
science is the one which ought to be followed by 
theology. No doubt, when a belief is only accepted 
as the conclusion of some definite inferential process 
with that process it must stand or fall. If, for in 
stance, we believe that there is hydrogen in the sun 
solely because that conclusion is forced upon us b}' 
certain arguments based upon spectroscopic obser 
vations, then, if these arguments should ever be dis- 
credited, the belief in solar hydrogen would, as a 
necessary consequence, be shaken or destroyed. 
But in cases where the belief is rather the occasion 
of an hypothesis than a conclusion from it, the de- 
struction of the hypothesis may be a reason for de- 
vising a new one, but is certainly no reason for aban- 
doning the belief. Nor in science do we ever take 
any other view. We do not, for example, step over 
a precipice because we are dissatisfied with all the 
attempts to account for gravitation. In theology, 
however, experience does sometimes lean too tim_ 
idly on theory, and when in the course of time 
theory decays, it drags down experience in its 
fall. How many persons are there who, because 
they dislike the theories of Atonement propounded, 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 349 

say, by Anselm, or by Grotius, or the versions of 
these which have imbedded themselves in the de- 
votional literature of Western Europe, feel bound 
' in reason ' to give up the doctrine itself? Because 
they cannot compress within the rigid limits of 
some semi-legal formula a mystery which, unless it 
were too vast for our full intellectual comprehen- 
sion, would surely be too narrow for our spiritual 
needs, the mystery itself is to be rejected ! Because 
they cannot contrive to their satisfaction a system 
of theological jurisprudence which shall include Re- 
demption as a leading case. Redemption is no longer 
to be counted among the consolations of mankind ! 



Ill 

There is, however, another reason beyond the 
natural strength of the judgments due to sense-per- 
ception which tends to make the change or abandon- 
ment of explanatory formulas a smoother operation 
in science than it is in theology ; and this reason is 
to be found in the fact that Religion works, and, to 
produce its full results, must needs work, through 
the agency of organised societies. It has, therefore, 
a social side, and from this its speculative side 
cannot, I believe, be kept wholly distinct. For al- 
though feeling is the effectual bond of all societies, 
these feelings themselves, it would seem, cannot be 
properly developed without the aid of something 
which is, or which does duty as, a reason. They 



350 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

require some alien material on which, so to speak, 
they may be precipitated ; round which they may 
crystallise and coalesce. In the case of political 
societies this reason is founded on identity of race, 
of language, of country, or even of mere material 
interest. But when the religious society and the 
political are not, as in primitive times, based on a 
common ground, the desired reason can scarcely 
be looked for elsewhere, and, in fact, never is 
looked for elsewhere, than in the acceptance of com- 
mon religious formulas. Whence it comes about 
that these formulas have to fulfil two functions 
which are not merely distinct but incomparable. 
They are both a statement of theological conclu- 
sions and the symbols of a corporate unity. They 
represent at once the endeavour to systematise re- 
ligious truth and to organise religious associations ; 
and they are therefore subject to two kinds of 
influence, and involve two kinds of obligation, 
which, though seldom distinguished, are never 
identical, and may sometimes even be opposed. 

The distinction is a simple one ; but the refusal 
to recognise it has been prolific in embarrassments, 
both for those who have assumed the duty of con- 
triving symbols, and for those on whom has fallen 
the burden of interpreting them. The rage for de- 
fining ^ which seized so large a portion of Christen- 
dom, both Roman and non-Roman, during the Ref- 
ormation troubles, and the fixed determination to 

^ Cf. Note on page 369. 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 35 1 

turn the definitions, when made, into impassable 
barriers between hostile ecclesiastical divisions, are 
among the most obvious, but not, I think, among 
the most satisfactory, facts in modern religious his- 
tory. To the definitions taken simply as well-in- 
tentioned efforts to make clear that which was ob- 
scure, and systematic that which was confused, I 
raise no objections. Of the practical necessity for 
some formal basis of Christian co-operation I am, as 
I have said, most firmly convinced. But not every 
formula which represents even the best theological 
opinion of its age is therefore fitted to unite men 
for all time in the furtherance of common religious 
objects, or in the support of common religious in- 
stitutions ; and the error committed in this con- 
nection by the divines of the Reformation, and the 
counter-Reformation, largely consisted in the mista- 
ken supposition that symbols and decrees, in whose 
very elaboration could be read the sure prophecy 
of decay, were capable of providing a convenient 
framework for a perpetual organisation. 

It is, however, beyond the scope of these Notes 
to discuss the dangers which the inevitable use of 
theological formulas as the groundwork of ecclesi- 
astical co-operation may have upon Christian unity, 
important and interesting as the subject is. I am 
properly concerned solely with the other side of 
the same shield, namely, the dangers with which 
this inevitable combination of theory and practice 
may threaten the smooth development of religious 



352 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

beliefs — dangers which do not follow in the parallel 
case of science, where no such combination is to be 
found. The doctrines of science have not got to be 
discussed amid the confusion and clamour of the 
market-place ; they stir neither hate nor love ; the 
fortunes of no living polity are bound up with them ; 
nor is there any danger lest they become petrified 
into party watchwords. Theology is differently 
situated. There the explanatory formula may be 
so historically intertwined with the sentiments and 
traditions of the ecclesiastical organisation ; the 
heat and pressure of ancient conflicts may have so 
welded them together, that to modify one and leave 
the other untouched seems well-nigh impossible. 
Yet even in such cases it is interesting to note how 
unexpectedly the most difficult adjustments are 
sometimes effected ; how, partly by the conscious, 
and still more by the unconscious, wisdom of man- 
kind ; by a little kindly forgetfulness ; by a few 
happy inconsistencies ; by methods which might 
not always bear the scrutiny of the logician, though 
they may well be condoned by the philosopher, the 
changes required by the general movement of belief 
are made with less friction and at a smaller cost — 
even to the enlightened — than might, perhaps, ante- 
cedently have been imagined. 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 353 

IV 

The road which theological thought is thus 
compelled to travel would, however, be rougher 
even than it is were it not for the fact that large 
changes and adaptations of belief are possible within 
the limits of the same unchanging formulas. This 
is a fact to which it has not been necessary hitherto 
to call the reader's attention. It has been more 
convenient, and so far not, I think, misleading, to 
follow familiar usage, and to assume that identity 
of statement involves identity of belief ; that when 
persons make the same assertions intelligently and 
in good faith they mean the same thing. But 
this on closer examination is seen not to be the 
case. In all branches of knowledge abundant ex- 
amples are to be discovered of statements which 
do not fall into the cycle of change described in 
the last section, which no lapse of time nor 
growth of learning would apparently require us 
to revise. But in every case it will, I think, be 
found that, with the doubtful exception of purely 
abstract propositions, these statements, themselves 
unmoved, represent a moving body of belief, vary- 
ing from one period of life to another, from in- 
dividual to individual, and from generation to gen- 
eration. 

Take an instance at random. I suppose that 
the world, so long as it thinks it worth while to 



354 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

have an opinion at all upon the subject, will con- 
tinue to accept without amendment the assertion that 
Julius Caesar was murdered at Rome in the first 
century B.C. But are we, therefore, to suppose 
that this proposition must mean the same thing 
in the mouths of all who use it? Surely not. 
Even if we refuse to take account of the associated 
sentiments which give a different colour in each 
man's eyes to the same intellectual judgment, we 
cannot ignore the varying positions which the 
judgment itself may hold in different systems of 
belief. It is manifestly absurd to say that a state- 
ment about the mode and time of Caesar's death 
has the same significance for the schoolboy who 
learns it as a line in a memoria technica^ and the his- 
torian (if such there be) to whom it represents a 
turning-point in the history of the world. Nor is it 
possible to deny that any alteration in our views on 
the nature of Death, or on the nature of Man, must 
necessarily alter the import of a proposition which 
asserts of a particular man that he suffered a par- 
ticular kind of death. 

This may perhaps seem to be an unprofitable 
subtlety ; and so, to be sure, in this particular case, 
it is. But a similar reflection is of obvious impor- 
tance when we come to consider, for example, such 
propositions as * there is a God,' or ' there is a world 
of material things.* Both these statements might 
be, and are, accepted by the rudest savage and by 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 35 5 

the most advanced philosopher. They may, so far 
as we can tell, continue to be accepted by men in all 
stages of culture till the last inhabitant of a perishing 
world is frozen into unconsciousness. Yet plainly 
the savage and the philosopher use these words in 
very different meanings. From the tribal deity of 
early times to the Christian God, or, if you prefer it, 
the Hegelian Absolute ; from Matter as conceived 
by primitive man to Matter as it is conceived by the 
modern physicist, how vast the interval ! The for- 
mulas are the same, the beliefs are plainly not the 
same. Nay, so wide are they apart, that while to 
those who hold the earlier view the later would be 
quite meaningless, it may require the highest effort 
of sympathetic imagination for those whose minds 
are steeped in the later view to reconstruct, even 
imperfectly, the substance of the earlier. The civil- 
ised man cannot fully understand the savage, nor 
the grown man the child. 



Now a question of some interest is suggested 
by this reflection. Can we, in the face of the 
wide divergence of meaning frequently conveyed 
by the same formula at different times, assert 
that what endures in such cases is anything more 
than a mere husk or shell ? Is it more than the 
mould into which any metal, base or precious, may 
be poured at will? Does identity of expression 



356 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

imply anything which deserves to be described as 
community of belief? Are we here dealing with 
things, or only with words ? 

In order to answer this question we must have 
some idea, in the first place, of the relation of Lan- 
guage to Belief, and, in the second place, of the re- 
lation of Belief to Reality. That the relation be- 
tween the first of these pairs is of no very precise 
or definite kind I have already indicated. And the 
fact is so obvious that it would hardly be worth 
while to insist on it were it not that Formal Logic 
and conventional usage both proceed on exactly the 
opposite supposition. They assume a constant rela- 
tion between the symbol and the thing symbolised ; 
and they consider that so long as a word is used (as 
the phrase is) ' in the same sense,' it corresponds, or 
ought to correspond, to the same thought. But this 
is an artificial simplification of the facts ; an hy- 
pothesis, most useful for certain purposes, but one 
which seldom or never corresponds with concrete 
reality. If in the sweat of our brow we can 
secure that inevitable differences of meaning do 
not vitiate the particular argument in hand, we 
have done all that logic requires, and all that lies 
in us to accomplish. Not only would more be 
impossible, but more would most certainly be un- 
desirable. Incessant variation in the uses to which 
we put the same expression is absolutely necessary 
if the complexity of the Universe is, even in the 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 357 

most imperfect fashion, to find a response in thought. 
If terms were counters, each purporting always to 
represent the whole of one unalterable aspect of 
reality, language would become, not the servant of 
thought, nor even its ally, but its tyrant. The wealth 
of our ideas would be limited by the poverty of our 
vocabulary. Science could not flourish, nor Litera- 
ture exist. All play of mind, all variety, all devel- 
opment would perish ; and mankind would spend its 
energies, not in using words, but in endeavouring to 
define them. 

It was this logical nightmare which oppressed 
the intellect of the Middle Ages. The schoolmen 
have been attacked for not occupying themselves 
with experimental observation, which, after all, was 
no particular business of theirs ; for indulging in 
excessive subtleties — surely no great crime in a 
metaphysician; and for endeavouring to combine 
the philosophy and the theology of their day into a 
coherent whole — an attempt which seems to me to 
be entirely praiseworthy. A better reason for their 
not having accomplished the full promise of their 
genius is to be found in the assumption which lies 
at the root of their interminable deductions, namely, 
that language is, or can be made, what logic by a 
convenient convention supposes it to be, and that if 
it were so made, it would be an instrument better 
fitted on that account to deal with the infinite vari- 
ety of the actual world. 



358 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 



VI 



If language, from the very nature of the case, 
hangs thus loosely to the belief which it endeavours 
to express, how closely does the belief fit to the 
reality with which it is intended to correspond ? To 
hear some persons talk one would really suppose 
that the enlightened portion of mankind, i.e, those 
who happen to agree with them, were blessed with 
a precise knowledge respecting large tracts of the 
Universe. They are ready on small provocation to 
embody their beliefs, whether scientific or theologi- 
cal, in a series of dogmatic statements which, as 
they will tell you, accurately express their own ac- 
curate opinions, and between which and any differing 
statements on the same subject is fixed that great 
gulf which divides for ever the realms of Truth 
from those of Error. Now I would venture to warn 
the reader against paying any undue meed of rever- 
ence to the axiom on which this view essentially de- 
pends, the axiom, I mean, that ' every belief must be 
either true or not true.' It is, of course, indisputable. 
But it is also unimportant ; and it is unimportant for 
this reason, that if we insist on assigning every be- 
lief to one or other of these two mutually exclusive 
classes, it will be found that most, if not all, the posi- 
tive beliefs which deal with concrete reality — the 
very beliefs, in short, about which a reasonable man 
may be expected piincipally to interest himself — 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 359 

would in strictness have to be classed among the 
' not true.' I do not say, be it observed, that all 
propositions about the concrete world must needs 
be erroneous; for, as we have seen, every proposi- 
tion provides the fitting verbal expression for many 
different beliefs, and of these it may be that one ex- 
presses the full truth. My contention merely is, that 
inasmuch as any fragmentary presentation of a con- 
crete whole must, because it is fragmentary, be 
therefore erroneous, the full complexity of any true 
belief about reality will necessarily transcend the 
comprehension of any finite intelligence. We know 
only in part, and we therefore know wrongly. 

But it may perhaps be said that observations like 
these involve a confusion between the ' not true * 
and the ' incomplete.' A belief, as the phrase is, 
may be * true so far as it goes,' even though it does 
not go far enough. It may contain the truth and 
nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth. Why 
should it under such circumstances receive so severe 
a condemnation ? Why is it to be branded, not only 
as inadequate, but as erroneous? To this I reply 
that the division of beliefs into the True, the Incom- 
plete, and the Wholly False may be, and for many 
purposes is, a very convenient one. But in the first 
place it is not philosophically accurate, since that 
which is incomplete is touched throughout with 
some element of falsity. And in the second place it 
does not happen to be the division on which we are 
engaged. We are dealing with the logical contra- 



360 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

dictories * True ' and ' Not True.' And what makes 
it worth while dealing with them is, that the partic- 
ular classification of beliefs which they suggest lies 
at the root of much needless controversy in all 
branches of knowledge, and not least in theology ; 
and that everywhere it has produced some confusion 
of thought and, it may be, some defect of charity. 
It is not in human nature that those who start from 
the assumption that all opinions are either true or 
not true, should do otherwise than take for granted 
that their own particular opinions belong to the 
former category ; and that therefore all inconsistent 
opinions held by other people must belong to the 
latter. Now this, in the current affairs of life, and 
in the ordinary commerce between man and man, is 
not merely a pardonable but a necessary way of look- 
ing at things. But it is foolish and even dangerous 
when we are engaged on the deeper problems of 
science, metaphysics, or theology ; when we are 
endeavouring in solitude to take stock of our posi- 
tion in the presence of the Infinite. However pro- 
found may be our ignorance of our ignorance, at 
least we should realise that to describe (when using 
language strictly) any scheme of belief as wholly 
false which has even imperfectly met the needs of 
mankind, is the height of arrogance ; and that to 
claim for any beliefs which we happen to approve 
that they are wholly true, is the height of absurdity. 
Somewhat more, be it observed, is thus required 
of us than a bare confession of ignorance. The 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 361 

least modest of men would admit without difficulty 
that there are a great many things which he does 
not understand ; but the most modest may perhaps 
be willing to suppose that there are some things 
which he does. Yet outside the relations of abstract 
propositions (about which I say nothing) this cannot 
be admitted. Nowhere else — neither in our know- 
ledge of ourselves, nor in our knowledge of each 
other, nor in our knowledge of the material world, 
nor in our knowledge of God, is there any belief 
which is more than an approximation, any method 
which is free from flaw, any result not tainted with 
error. The simplest intuitions and the remotest 
speculations fall under the same condemnation. 
And though the fact is apt to be hidden from us 
by the unyielding definitions with which alike in 
science and theology it is our practice to register 
attained results, it would, as we have seen, be a 
serious mistake to suppose that any complete corre- 
spondence between Belief and Reality was secured 
by the linguistic precision and the logical impecca- 
bility of the propositions by which beliefs themselves 
are communicated and recorded. 

To some persons this train of reflection suggests 
nothing but sceptical misgiving and intellectual 
despair. To me it seems, on the other hand, to save 
us from both. What kind of a Universe would that 
be which we could understand? If it were intel- 
ligible (by us), would it be credible ? If our reason 
could comprehend it, would it not be too narrow 



362 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

for our needs ? * I believe because it is impossible * 
may be a pious paradox. ' I disbelieve because it is 
simple ' commends itself to me as an axiom. An 
axiom doubtless to be used with discretion : an 
axiom which may easily be perverted in the inter- 
ests of idleness and superstition ; an axiom, never- 
theless, which contains a valuable truth not always 
remembered by those who make especial profession 
of worldly wisdom. 



VII 



However this may be, the opinions here advo- 
cated may help us to solve certain difficulties oc- 
casionally suggested by current methods of dealing 
with the relation between Formulas and Beliefs. It 
has not always, for instance, been found easy to 
reconcile the immutability claimed for theological 
doctrines with the movement observed in theologi- 
cal ideas. Neither of them can readily be aban- 
doned. The conviction that there are Christian 
verities which, once secured for the human race, 
cannot by any lapse of time be rendered obsolete 
is one which no Church would willingly abandon. 
Yet the fact that theological thought follows the 
laws which govern the evolution of all other thought, 
that it changes from age to age, largely as regards 
the relative emphasis given to its various elements, 
not inconsiderably as regards the substance of those 
elements themselves, is a fact written legibly across 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 363 

the pages of ecclesiastical history. How is this 
apparent contradiction to be accommodated ? 

Consider another difficulty — one quite of a dif- 
ferent kind. The common sense of mankind has 
been shocked at the value occasionally attributed 
to uniformity of theological profession, when it is 
perhaps obvious from many of the circumstances of 
the case that this carries with it no security for uni- 
formity of inward conviction. There is an unreal- 
ity, or at least an externality about such professions 
which, to those who think (rightly enough) that 
religion, if it is to be of any value, must come from 
the heart, is apt not unnaturally to be repulsive. 
Yet, on the other hand, it is but a shallow form of 
historical criticism which shall attribute this desire 
for conformity either to mere impatience of ex- 
pressed differences of opinion (no doubt a powerful 
and widely distributed motive), or to the perversi- 
ties of Priestcraft. What, then, is the view which 
we ought to take of it? Is it good or bad? and, if 
good, what purpose does it serve ? 

Now these questions may be answered, I think, 
at least in part, if we keep in mind two distinc- 
tions on which in this and the preceding chapter 
I have ventured to insist — the distinctions, I mean, 
in the first place^ between the function of formu- 
las as the systematic expression of religious doc- 
trine, and their function as the basis of religious co- 
operation ; and the distinction, in the second place, 
between the accuracy of any formula and the real 



364 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

truth of the various beliefs which it is capable of 
expressing. 

Uniformity of profession, for example, to take the 
last difficulty first, can be regarded as unimportant 
only by those who forget that, while there is no 
necessary connection whatever between the causes 
which conduce to successful co-operation and those 
which conduce to the attainment of speculative 
truth, of these two objects the first may, under 
certain circumstances, be much more important than 
the second. A Church is something more than a 
body of more or less qualified persons engaged more 
or less successfully in the study of theology. It 
requires a very different equipment from that which 
is sufficient for a learned society. Something more 
is asked of it than independent research. It is an 
organisation charged with a great practical work. 
For the successful promotion of this work unity, dis- 
cipline, and self-devotion are the principal requisites ; 
and, as in the case of every other such organisation, 
the most powerful source of these qualities is to be 
found in the feelings aroused by common memories, 
common hopes, common loyalties ; by professions 
in which all agree ; by a ceremonial which all share ; 
by customs and commands which all obey. He, 
therefore, who would wish to expel such influences 
either from Church or State, on the ground that 
they may alter (as alter they most certainly will) the 
opinions which, in their absence, the members of 
the community, left to follow at will their own spec- 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 365 

ulative devices, would otherwise form, may know 
something of science or philosophy, but assuredly 
knows little of human nature. 

But it will perhaps be said that co-operation, if 
it is only to be had on these terms, may easily be 
bought too dear. So, indeed, it may. The history 
of the Church is unhappily there to prove the fact. 
But as this is true of religious organisations, so also 
is it true of every other organisation — national, po- 
litical, military, what you will — by which the work 
of the world is rendered possible. There are cir- 
cumstances which may make schism justifiable, as 
there are circumstances which make treason justifi- 
able, or mutiny justifiable. But without going into 
the ethics of revolt, without endeavouring to de- 
termine the exact degree of error, oppression, or 
crime on the part of those who stay within the 
organisation which may render innocent or neces- 
sary the secession of those who leave it, we may rest 
assured that something very different is, or ought to 
be, involved in the acceptance or rejection of com- 
mon formulas than an announcement to the world 
of a purely speculative agreement respecting the 
niceties of doctrinal statement. 

This view may perhaps be more readily accepted 
when it is realised that, as I have pointed out, no 
agreement about theological or any other doctrine 
insures, or, indeed, is capable of producing, same- 
ness of belief. We are no more able to believe what 
other people believe than to feel what other people 



366 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

feel. Two friends read together the same descrip. 
tion of a landscape. Does anyone suppose that it 
stirs within them precisely the same quality of sen- 
timent, or evokes precisely the same subtle associa- 
tions ? And yet, if this be impossible, as it surely 
is, even in the case of friends attuned, so far as may 
be, to the same emotional key, how hopeless must 
it be in the case of an artist and a rustic, an Ancient 
and a Modern, an Andaman islander and a European ! 
But if no representation of the splendours of Nature 
can produce in us any perfect identity of admiration, 
why expect the definitions of theology or science to 
produce in us any perfect identity of belief? It may 
not be. This uniformity of conviction which so 
many have striven to attain for themselves, and to 
impose upon their fellows, is an unsubstantial phan- 
tasm, born of a confusion between language and the 
thought which language so imperfectly expresses. 
In this world, at least, we are doomed to differ even 
in the cases where we most agree. 

There is, however, consolation to be drawn from 
the converse statement, which is, I hope, not less true. 
If there are differences where we most agree, surely 
also there are agreements where we most differ. I 
like to think of the human race, from whatever 
stock its members may have sprung, in whatever 
age they may be born, whatever creed they may 
profess, together in the presence of the One Reality, 
engaged, not wholly in vain, in spelling out some 
fragments of its message. All share its being ; to 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 367 

none are its oracles wholly dumb. And if both in 
the natural world and in the spiritual the advance- 
ment we have made on our forefathers be so great 
that our interpretation seems indefinitely removed 
from that which primitive man could alone compre- 
hend, and wherewith he had to be content, it may 
be, indeed I think it is, the case that our approxi- 
mate guesses are still closer to his than they are to 
their common Object, and that far as we seem to 
have travelled, yet, measured on the celestial scale, 
our intellectual progress is scarcely to be discerned, 
so minute is the parallax of Infinite Truth. 

These observations, however, seem only to ren- 
der more distant any satisfactory solution of the 
first of the difficulties propounded above. If knowl- 
edge must, at the best, be so imperfect ; if agree- 
ment, real inner agreement, about the object of 
knowledge can thus never be complete ; and if, in 
addition to this, the history of religious thought is, 
like all other history, one of change and develop- 
ment, where and what are those immutable doc- 
trines which, in the opinion of most theologians, 
ought to be handed on, a sacred trust, from genera- 
tion to generation ? The answer to this question is, 
I think, suggested by the parallel cases of science 
and ethics. For all these things may be said of 
them as well as of theology, and they also are the 
trustees of statements which ought to be preserved 
unchanged through all revolutions in scientific and 
ethical theory. Of these statem.ents I do not pre* 



368 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

tend to give either a list or a definition. But with- 
out saying what they are, it is at least permissible, 
after the discussion in the last chapter, to say what, 
as a rule, they are not. They are not Explanatory. 
Rare indeed is it to find explanations of the concrete 
which, if they endure at all, do not require perpetual 
patching to keep them in repair. Not among these, 
but among the statements of things explained, of 
things that want explanation, yes, and of things that 
are inexplicable, we must search for the proposi- 
tions about the real world capable of ministering 
unchanged for indefinite periods to the uses of Man- 
kind. Such propositions may record a particular 
*fact,' as that 'Caesar is dead.' They may embody 
an ethical imperative, as that ' Stealing is wrong.* 
They may convey some great principle, as that the 
order of Nature is uniform, or that ' God exists.* 
All these statements, even if accurate (as I assume, 
for the sake of argument, that they are), will, no 
doubt, as I have said, have a different import for 
different persons and for different ages. But this is 
not only consistent with their value as vehicles for 
the transmission of truth — it is essential to it. If 
their meaning could be exhausted by one genera- 
tion, they would be false for the next. It is because 
they can be charged with a richer and richer con- 
tent as our knowledge slowly grows to a fuller har- 
mony with the Infinite Reality, that they may be 
counted among the most precious of our inalienable 
possessions. 



BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 369 



NOTE 

The permanent value which the results of the great 
ecclesiastical controversies of the first four centuries have 
had for Christendom, as compared with that possessed by 
the more transitory speculations of later ages, illustrates, 
I think, the suggestion contained in the text. For what- 
ever opinion the reader may entertain of the decisions at 
which the Church arrived on the doctrine of the Trinity, 
it is at least clear that they were not in the nature of ex- 
planations. They were, in fact, precisely the reverse. 
They were the negation of explanations. The various 
heresies which it combated were, broadly speaking, all 
endeavours to bring the mystery as far as possible into 
harmony with contemporary speculations. Gnostic, Neo- 
platonic, or Rationalising, to relieve it from this or that 
difficulty : in short, to do something towards * explaining * 
it. The Church held that all such explanations or partial 
explanations inflicted irremediable impoverishment on the 
idea of the Godhead which was essentially involved in the 
Christian revelation. They insisted on preserving that 
idea in all its inexplicable fulness ; and so it has come 
about that while such simplifications as those of the 
Arians, for example, are so alien and impossible to modern 
modes of thought that if they had been incorporated with 
Christianity they must have destroyed it, the doctrine 
of Christ's Divinity still gives reality and life to the wor. 
ship of millions of pious souls, who are wholly ignorant 
both of the controversy to which they owe its preser- 



370 BELIEFS, FORMULAS, AND REALITIES 

vation, and of the technicalities which its discussion has 
involved. 1 

^ [On this unoffending note Principal Fairbairn, writing as an 
expert theologian, has passed some severe comments (see * Cathol- 
icism, Roman and Anglican,' p. 356 et seq.). He seems to think 
the terms used in the definitions of Nicea and Chalcedon must, be- 
cause they are technical, be therefore ' of the nature of explana- 
tions.' I cannot agree. I think they were used, not to explain the 
mystery they were designed to express, but to show with unmis- 
takable precision wherein the rival formula, which was so much 
more in harmony with the ordinary philosophic thought of the day, 
fell short of what was required by the Christian consciousness.] 



371 



SUMMARY 

1. All men who reflect at all, interpret their ex- 
periences in the light of certain broad theories and 
preconceptions as to the world in which they live. 
These theories and preconceptions need not be ex- 
plicitly formulated, nor are they usually, if ever, 
thoroughly self-consistent. The}^ do not remain un- 
changed from age to age ; they are never precisely 
identical in two individuals. Speaking, however, of 
the present age and of the general body of educated 
opinion, they may be said to fall roughly into two 
categories — which we may call respectively the 
Spiritualistic and the Naturalistic. In the Natural- 
istic class are included by common usage Positivism, 
Agnosticism, Materialism, &c., though not always 
with the good will of those who make profession of 
these doctrines (pp. i-8). 

2. In estimating the value of any of these theories 
we have to take into acoount something more than 
their ' evidence ' in the narrow meaning often given 
to that term. Their bearing upon the most important 
forms of human activity and emotion deserves also 
to be considered. For, as I proceed to show, there 



372 SUMMARY 

may, in addition to the merely logical incongruities 
in which the essence of inconsistency is commonly 
thought to reside, be also incongruities between 
theory and practice, or theory and feeling, producing 
inconsistencies of a different, but, it may be, not less 
formidable description. 

3. In the first chapter (pp. 11-32) I have endeav- 
oured to analyse some of these incongruities as the)^ 
manifest themselves in the collision between Natural- 
ism and Ethical emotions. That there are emotions 
proper to Ethics is admitted on all hands (p. 11). It 
is not denied, for instance, that a feeling of reverence 
for what is right — for what is prescribed by the 
moral law — is a necessary element in any sane and 
healthy view of things : while it becomes evident on 
reflection that this feeling cannot be independent of 
the origin from which that moral law is supposed to 
flow, and the place which it is thought to occupy in 
the Universe of things (p. 13). 

4. Now on the Naturalistic theory, the place it 
occupies is insignificant (p. 14), and its origin is quite 
indistinguishable from that of any other contrivance 
by which Nature provides for the survival of the 
race. Courage and self-devotion are factors in 
evolution which came later into the field than e.g. 
greediness or lust: and they require therefore the 
special protection and encouragement supplied by 
fine sentiments. These fine sentiments, however, 
are merely a device comparable to other devices, 



SUMMARY 373 

often disgusting or trivial, produced in the interests 
of race-preservation by Natural Selection ; and v^hen 
we are under their sway we are being cheated by 
Nature for our good — or rather for the good of the 
species to which we belong (pp. 14-19). 

5. The feeling of freedom is, on the Naturalist 
theory, another beneficent illusion of the same kind. 
If Naturalism be true, it is certain that we are not 
free. If we are not free, it is certain that we are not 
responsible. If we are not responsible, it is certain 
that we are exhibiting a quite irrational emotion 
when we either repent our own misdoings or rever- 
ence the virtues of other people (pp. 20-26). 

6. There is yet a third kind of disharmony be- 
tween the emotions permitted by Naturalism and 
those proper to Ethics — the emotions, namely, which 
relate to the consequences of action. We instinctively 
ask for some adjustment between the distribution of 
happiness and the distribution of virtue, and for an 
ethical end adequate to our highest aspirations. The 
first of these can only be given if we assume a future 
life, an assumption evidently unwarranted by Natu- 
ralism (pp. 26-28) ; the second is rendered impossible 
by the relative insignificance of man and all his 
doings, as measured on the scale supplied by modern 
science. The brief fortunes of our race occupy but 
a fragment of the range in time and space which is 
open to our investigations ; and if it is only in rela- 
tion to them that morality has a meaning, our prac- 



374 SUMMARY 

tical ideal must inevitably be petty, compared with 
the sweep of our intellectual vision (pp. 28-32). 

7. With Chapter II. (p. 33) we turn from Ethics 
to Esthetics ; and discuss the relation which Natu- 
ralism bears to the emotions aroused in us by Beauty. 
A comparatively large space (pp. 35-61) is devoted 
to an investigation into the ' natural history ' of taste. 
This is not only (in the author's opinion) intrinsically 
interesting, but it is a desirable preliminary to the 
contention (pp. 61-65) that (on the Naturalist view 
of things) Beauty represents no permanent quality 
or relation in the world as revealed to us by Science. 
This becomes evident when we reflect {a) that could 
we perceive things as the Physicist tells us they are, 
we might regard them as curious and interesting, 
but hardly as beautiful ; (d) that differences of taste 
are notorious and, indeed, inevitable, considering 
that no causes exist likely to call into play the 
powerful selective machinery by which is secured 
an approximate uniformity in morals; (c) that even 
the apparent agreement among official critics repre- 
sents no identity of taste ; while (d) the genuine 
identity of taste, so often found in the same public 
at the same time, is merely a case of that ' tendency 
to agreement' wTiich, though it plays a most im- 
portant part in the general conduct of social life, 
has in it no element of permanence, and, indeed, 
under the name of fashion^ is regarded as the very 
type of mutability. 



SUMMARY 375 

8. From these considerations it becomes apparent 
(pp. 65, 66) that aesthetic emotion at its best and 
highest is altogether discordant with Naturalistic 
theory. 

9. The advocates of Naturalism may perhaps 
reply that, even supposing the foregoing arguments 
were sound, and there is really this alleged collision 
between Naturalistic theory and the highest emo- 
tions proper to Ethics and Esthetics, yet, however 
much we may regret the fact, it should not affect 
our estimate of a creed which, professing to draw its 
inspiration from reason alone, ought in no wise to be 
modified by sentiment. How far this contention can 
be sustained will be. examined later. In the mean- 
while it suggests an inquiry into the position which 
that Reason to which Naturalism appeals occupies 
a«c®rding to Naturalism itself in the general scheme 
of things (Chapter III. pp. 6'j-j6), 

10. According to the spiritual view of things, the 
material Universe is the product of Reason. Accord- 
ing to Naturalism it is its source. Reason and the 
inlets of sense through which reason obtains the data 
on which it works are the products of non-rational 
causes ; and if these causes are grouped under the 
guidance of Natural Selection so as to produce a 
rational or partially rational result, the character of 
this result is determined by our utilitarian needs 
rather than our speculative aspirations (pp. 67-72). 

11. Reason therefore, on the Naturalistic hypoth- 



376 SUMMARY 

esis, occupies no very exalted or important place 
in the Cosmos. It supplies it neither with a First 
cause nor a Final cause. It is a merely local accident 
ranking after appetite and instinct among the expe- 
dients by which the existence of a small class of 
mammals on a very insignificant planet is rendered 
a little less brief, though perhaps not more pleasur- 
able, than it would otherwise be (pp. 72-76). 

12. Chapter IV. (pp. 77-86) is a summary of the 
three preceding ones and terminates with a con- 
trasted pair of catechisms based respectively on the 
Spiritualistic and the Naturalistic method of inter- 
preting the world (pp. 83-86). 

13. This incongruity between Naturalism and the 
higher emotions inevitably provokes an examination 
into the evidence on which Naturalism itself rests, 
and this accordingly is the task to which we set our- 
selves at the beginning of Part II. (See Part II., 
Chapter I., pp. 89-136.) Now on its positive side 
the teaching of Naturalism is by definition identical 
with the teaching of Science. But while Science is 
not bound to give any account of its first principles, 
and in fact never does so. Naturalism, which is 
nothing if not a philosophy, is in a different position. 
The essential character of its pretensions carries 
with it the obligation to supply a reasoned justifica- 
tion of its existence to any who may require it, 

14. It is no doubt true that Naturalistic philoso- 
phers have never been very forward to supply this 



SUMMARY 377 

reasoned justification (pp. 94-96), yet we cannot go 
wrong in saying that Naturalistic theory, in all its 
forms, bases knowledge entirely upon experiences ; 
and that of these experiences the most important 
are those which are given in the * immediate judg- 
ments of the senses * (pp. 106, 107), and principally 
of vision (p. 108). 

15. A brief consideration, however, of this simple 
and common-sense statement shows that two kinds 
of difficulty are inherent in it. In the first place, the 
very account which Science gives of the causal steps 
by which the object experienced (e.g. the thing seen) 
makes an impression upon our senses, shows that the 
experiencing self, the knowing ' I,' is in no imme- 
diate or direct relation with that object (pp. 107-1 11); 
and it shows further that the message thus conveyed 
by the long chain of causes and effects connecting 
the object experienced and the experiencing self, is 
essentially mendacious (pp. 111-118). The attempt 
to get round this difficulty either by regarding the 
material world as being not the object immediately 
experienced, but only an inference from it, or by 
abolishing the material world altogether in the man- 
ner of Berkeley, Hume, and J. S. Mill, is shown 
(pp. 1 18-126) to be impracticable, and to be quite 
inconsistent with the teaching of Science, as men 
of science understand it. 

16. In the second 'i^XdiQQ, it is clear that we require 
in order to construct the humblest scientific edifice, 



3/8 SUMMARY 

not merely isolated experiences, but general princi- 
ples (such as the law of universal causation) by which 
isolated experiences may be co-ordinated. How on 
any purely empirical theory are these to be obtained ? 
No method that will resist criticism has ever been 
suggested ; and the difficulty, insuperable in any 
case, seems enormously increased when we reflect 
that it is not the accumulated experience of the race, 
but the narrow experience of the individual on which 
we have to rely. It must be my experience for me, 
and your experience for you. Otherwise we should 
find ourselves basing our belief in these general 
principles upon our general knowledge of mankind 
past and present, though we cannot move a step 
towards the attainment of such general knowledge 
without first assuming these principles to be true 
(pp. 127-132). 

17. It would not be possible to go further in the 
task of exposing the philosophic insufficiency of the 
Naturalistic creed without the undue employment 
of philosophic technicalities. But, in my view, to 
go further is unnecessary. If fully considered, the 
criticisms contained in this chapter are sufficient, 
without any supplement, to show the hollowness of 
the Naturalistic claim, and as it is with Naturalism 
that this work is mainly concerned, there seems no 
conclusive necessity for touching on rival systems 
of Philosophy. 

As a precautionary measure, however, and to 



SUMMARY 379 

prevent a flank attack, I have (in Part II. Chapter 
II.) briefly examined certain aspects of Transcen- 
dental Idealism in the shape in which it has prin- 
cipally gained currency in this country ; while at 
the beginning of the succeeding chapter (pp. 163- 
170) I have indicated my reason for respectfully 
ignoring any other of the great historic systems of 
Philosophy. 

18. The conclusion of this part of the discussion, 
therefore, is that neither in Naturalism, with which 
we are principally concerned, nor in Rationalism, 
which is Naturalism in the making (pp. 174-180), 
nor in any other system of thought which com- 
mands an important measure of contemporary as- 
sent, can we find a coherent scheme which shall 
satisfy our critical faculties. Now this result may 
seem purely negative ; but evidently it carries^ with 
it an important practical corollary. For whereas 
the ordinar}^ canons of consistency might require us 
to sacrifice all belief and sentiments which did not 
fully harmonise with a system rationally based on 
rational foundations, it is a mere abuse of these 
canons to apply them in support of a system whose 
inner weaknesses and contradictions show it to be 
at best but a halting and imperfect approximation 
to one aspect of absolute truth (pp. 180, 181). 

19. Chapter IV. in Part II. (pp. 182-189) may be 
regarded as a parenthesis, though a needful paren- 
thesis, in the course of the general argument. It is 



380 SUMMARY 

designed to expose the absurdity of the endeavour 
to make rationalising theories (as defined on pp. 
174-180) issue not in Naturalism but in Theology. 
Paley's ' Evidences of Christianity ' is the best 
known example of this procedure ; and I have en- 
deavoured to show that, however valuable it may 
be as a supplement to a spiritualistic creed already 
accepted, it is quite unequal to the task of refuting 
Naturalism by extracting Spiritualism out of the 
Biblical narrative by ordinary historical and induc- 
tive methods. 

20. With Part II. Chapter IV. ends the critical 
or destructive portion of the Essay. With Part III. 
(p. 194) begins the attempt at construction. The 
preliminary stage of this consists in some brief ob- 
servations on the Natural History of beliefs. By 
the natural history of beliefs I mean an account of 
beliefs regarded simply as phenomena among other 
phenomena; not as premises or conclusions in a 
logical series, but as antecedents or consequents in 
a causal series. From this point of view we have to 
ask ourselves not whether a belief is true, but whence 
it arose ; not whether it ought to be believed, but 
how it comes to be believed. We have to put our- 
selves, so to speak, in the position of a superior being 
making anthropological investigations from some 
other planet (p. 197), or into the position we our- 
selves occupy when examining opinions which have 
for us only an historic interest. 



SUMMARY 381 

21. Such an investigation directed towards what 
may roughly be described as the ' immediate beliefs 
of experience ' — those arising from perception and 
memory — shows that they are psychical accompani- 
ments of neural processes — processes which in their 
simpler form appear neither to possess nor to require 
this mental collaboration. Physiological co-ordina- 
tion, unassociated with any psychical phenomena 
worthy to be described as perception or belief, is 
sufficient for the lower animals or for most of them ; 
it is in many cases sufficient for man. Conscious 
experience and the judgments in which it is embodied 
seem, from this point of view, only an added and 
almost superfluous perfection, a finishing touch given 
to activities which often do excellently well with no 
such rational assistance (pp. 197-201). 

22. Empirical philosophy in its cruder form 
would have us believe that by some inductive leger- 
demain there may be extracted from these psycho- 
logical accidents the vast mass of supplementary 
beliefs actually required by the higher social and 
scientific life of the race (pp. 200, 201). We have 
already shown as regards one great scientific axiom 
(the uniformity of Nature) that this is not logically 
possible. We may now say more generally that 
from the point of view of Natural History it is not 
what in fact happens. Not reasoning, inductive or 
deductive, is the true parent of this numerous off- 
spring : we should be nearer the mark if we looked 



382 SUMMARY 

to Authority — using this as a convenient collective 
name for the vast multitude of psychological causes 
of belief, not being also reasons for it, which have their 
origin in the social environment, and are due to the 
action of mind on mind. 

23. An examination into this subject carried out 
at considerable length (Part III., Chapter II., pp. 
202-240) serves to show not merely that this is so, 
but that, if society is to exist, it could not be other- 
wise. Reasoning no doubt has its place both in the 
formation of beliefs and in their destruction. But 
its part is insignificant compared with that played 
by Authority. For it is to Authority that we owe 
the most fundamental premises on which our reason- 
ings repose ; and it is Authority which commonly 
determines the conclusions to which they must in 
the main adapt themselves. 

24. These views, taken in connection with the 
criticism on Naturalism contained in Part II., show 
that the beliefs of which Naturalism is composed 
must on its own principles have a non-rational source, 
and on any principles must derive largely from Au- 
thority : that Naturalism neither owes its origin to 
reason, nor has as yet been brought into speculative 
harmony with it. Why, then, should t be regarded 
as of greater validity than (say) Theology ? Is there 
any relevant difference between them ? and, if not, 
is it reasonable to act as if there were? (pp. 243' 
246). 



SUMMARY 383 

25. One difference there undoubtedly is (p. 246). 
About the judgments which form the starting-point 
of Science there is unquestionably an inevitableness 
lacking to those which lie at the root of Theology or 
Ethics. There may be, and are, all sorts of specu- 
lative difficulties connected with the reality or even 
the meaning of an external world ; nevertheless our 
beliefs respecting what we see and handle, however 
confused they may seem on analysis, remain abso- 
lutely coercive in their assurance compared with the 
beliefs with which Ethics and Theology are prin- 
cipally concerned (pp. 246, 247). 

26. There is here no doubt a real difference — 
though one which the Natural History of beliefs may 
easily explain (p. 249). But is it a relevant differ- 
ence? Assuredly not. The coercion exercised by 
these beliefs is not a rational coercion. It is due 
neither to any deliberate act of reason, nor to any 
blind effect of heredity or tradition which reason ex 
post facto can justify. The necessity to which we 
bow, rules us by violence, not by right. 

27. The differentiation which Naturalism makes 
in favour of its own narrow creed is thus an irrational 
differentiation, and so the great masters of specula- 
tive thought, as well as the great religious prophets, 
have always held (pp. 252-255). 

28. And if no better ground for accepting as fact 
a material world more or less in correspondence with 
our ordinary judgments of sense perceptions can be 



384 SUMMARY 

alleged than the practical need for doing so, there is 
nothing irrational in postulating a like harmony be- 
tween the Universe and other Elements in our nat- 
ure * of a later, a more uncertain, but no ignobler 
growth ' (pp. 256-260). 

29. Nor can it be said that, in respect of distinct- 
ness or lucidity, fundamental scientific conceptions 
have any advantage over Theological or Ethical ones 
(pp. 261-265). Mr. Spencer has indeed pointed out 
with great force that ' ultimate scientific ideas,* like 
* ultimate religious ideas,' are ' unthinkable.' But he 
has not drawn the proper moral from his discovery. 
If in the case of Science we accept unhesitatingly 
postulates about the material world as more certain 
than any reason which can be alleged in their defence ; 
if the needs of everyday life forbid us to take account 
of the difficulties which seem on analysis to becloud 
our simplest experiences, practical wisdom would 
seem to dictate a like course when we are dealing 
with the needs of our spiritual nature. 

30. We have now reached a point in the argu- 
ment at which it becomes clear that the ' conflict 
between Science and Religion,' if it exists, is not 
one which in the present state of our knowledge can 
or ought to require us to reject either of these sup- 
posed incompatibles. For in truth the difficulties 
and contradictions are to be found rather within 
their separate spheres than between them. The 
conflicts from which they suffer are in the main 



SUMMARY 385 

civil conflicts ; and if we could frame a satisfying 
philosophy of Science and a satisfying philosophy of 
Religion, we should, I imagine, have little difficulty 
in framing a philosophy which should embrace them 
both (p. 273). 

31. We may, indeed, go much further, and say 
that, unless it borrow something from Theology, a 
philosophy of Science is impossible. The perplexi- 
ties in which we become involved if we accept the 
Naturalistic dogma that all beliefs ultimately trace 
their descent to non-rational causes, have emerged 
again and again in the course of the preceding ar- 
gument. Such a doctrine cuts down any theory of 
knowledge to the root. It can end in nothing but 
the most impotent scepticism. Science, therefore, is 
at least as much as Theology compelled to postulate 
a Rational Ground or Cause of the world, who made 
it intelligible and us in some faint degree able to 
understand it (pp. 277-283). 

32. The difficulties which beset us whenever we 
attempt to conceive how this Rational (and therefore 
Spiritual) cause acts upon or is related to the Mate- 
rial Universe, are no doubt numerous and probably 
insoluble. But they are common to Science and to 
Religion, and, indeed, are of a kind which cannot 
be avoided even by the least theological of philoso- 
phies, since they are at once suggested in their most 
embarrassing form whenever we try to realise the 
relation between the Self and the world of matter, 



386 SUMMARY 

a relation which it is impossible practically to deny 
or speculatively to understand (pp. 283-286). 

33. It is true that at first sight most forms of 
religion, and certainly Christianity as ordinarily held, 
seem to have burdened themselves with a difficulty 
from which Science is free — the familiar difficulty of 
Miracles. But there is probably here some miscon- 
ception. Whether or not there is sufficient reason 
for believing any particular Wonder recorded in 
histories, sacred or profane, can only be decided by 
each person according to his general view of the 
system of the world. But however he may decide, 
his real difficulty will not be with any supposed 
violation of the principle of Uniformity (a principle 
not always accurately understood by those who 
appeal to it (pp. 289-292)), but with a metaphysical 
paradox common to all forms of religion, whether 
they lay stress on the * miraculous ' or not. 

34. What is this metaphysical paradox? It is 
the paradox involved in supposing that the spiritual 
source of all that exists exercises * preferential action ' 
on behalf of one portion of his creation rather than 
another ; that He draws a distinction between good 
and bad, and having created all, yet favours only a 
part. This paradox is implied in such expressions as 
* Providence,' * A Power that makes for Righteous- 
ness,' * A Benevolent Deity,' and all the other 
phrases by which Theology adds something to the 
notion of the ' Infinite Substance,' or ' Universal 



SUMMARY 387 

Idea or Subject,' which is the proper theme of a 
non-theological Metaphysic (pp. 297-302). 

35. In this preferential action, however. Science 
and Ethics seem as much interested as Theology. 
For, in the first place, it is worth noting that if we 
accept the doctrine of a First Cause immanent in 
the world of phenomena, the modern doctrine of 
Evolution almost requires us to hold that there is in 
the Universe a purpose being slowly worked out — a 
' striving towards something which is not, but which 
gradually becomes, and, in the fulness of time, will 
be* (pp. 301-302). 

36. But, in truth, much stronger reasons have 
already been advanced for holding that both Science 
and Ethics must postulate not merely a universal 
substance or subject, but a Deity working by what 
I have ventured to call ' preferential methods.' So 
far as Science is concerned, we have already seen 
that at the root of every rational process lies a 
non-rational one, and that the least unintelligible 
account which can be given of the fact that these 
non-rational processes, physical, physiological, and 
social, issue in knowledge is, that to this end they 
were preferentially guided by Supreme Reason 
(pp. 303-306). 

37. A like argument may be urged with even 
greater force in the case of Ethics. If we hold — as 
teachers of all schools profess to hold — that morality 
is a thing of intrinsic worth, we seem driven also to 



388 SUMMARY 

assume that the complex train of non-moral causes 
which have led to its recognition, and have at the 
same time engendered the sentiments which make 
the practice of it possible, have produced these re- 
sults under moral — i.e. preferential — guidance (pp. 
306, 307). 

38. But if Science and Ethics, to say nothing of 
-Esthetics (pp. 307, 308), thus require the double 
presupposition of a Deity and of a Deity working by 
'preferential' methods, we need feel no surprise if 
these same preferential methods have shown them- 
selves in the growth and development of Theology 
(p. 310). 

39. The reality of this preferential intervention 
has been persistently asserted by the adherents of 
every religion. They have always claimed that their 
beliefs about God were due to God. The one ex- 
ception is to be found in the professors of what is 
rather absurdly called Natural Religion, who are 
wont to represent it as the product of * unassisted 
reason.* In face, however, of the arguments already 
advanced to prove that there is no such thing as 
unassisted reason, this pretension may be summarily 
dismissed (pp. 309-311). 

40. Though we describe, as we well may, this 
preferential action in matters theological by the 
word Inspiration, it does not follow, of course, that 
what is inspired is on that account necessarily true, 
but only that it has an element of truth due to the 



SUMMARY 389 

Divine co-operation with our limited intelligences. 
And for my own part I am unwilling to admit that 
some such element is not to be found in all the great 
religious systems which have in any degree satisfied 
the spiritual needs of mankind (pp. 31 1-3 14). 

41. So far the argument has gone to show that 
the great body of our beliefs, scientific, ethical, 
aesthetic, and theological, form a more coherent and 
satisfactory whole in a Theistic than in a Natural- 
istic setting. Can the argument be pressed further? 
Can we say that those departments of knowledge, 
or any of them, are more coherent and satisfactory 
in a distinctively Christian setting than in a mere- 
ly Theistic one? (p. 317). If so, the ^ /r/^r/ pre- 
suppositions which have induced certain learned 
schools of criticism to deal with the Gospel narra- 
tives as if these were concerned with events intrin- 
sically incredible will need modification, and there 
may even on consideration appear to be an a priori 
presupposition in favour of their general veracity 

(PP- 317-325). 

42. Now it can, I think, be shown that the central 
doctrine of Christianity, the doctrine which essen- 
tially differentiates it from every other religion, has 
an ethical import of great and even of an increasing 
value. The Incarnation as dogma is not a theme 
within the scope of this work ; but it may not be 
amiss, by way of Epilogue, to enumerate three as- 
pects of it in which it especially ministers, as noth- 



390 SUMMARY 

ing else could conceivably minister, to some of the 
most deep-seated of our moral necessities. 

43 {a). The whole tendency of modern discovery 
is necessarily to magnify material magnitudes to the 
detriment of spiritual ones. The insignificant part 
played by moral forces in the cosmic drama, the 
vastness of the physical forces by which we are 
closed in and overwhelmed, the infinities of space, 
time, and energy thrown open by Science to our 
curious investigations, increase (on the Theistic 
hypothesis) our sense of the power of God, but 
relatively impoverish our sense of his moral interest 
in his creatures. It is surely impossible to imagine 
a more effective cure for this distorted yet most 
natural estimate than a belief in the Incarnation 
(pp. 326-330). 

44 {b). Again, the absolute dependence of mind 
on body, taught, and rightly taught, by empirical 
science, confirmed by each man's own humiliating 
experience, is of all beliefs the one which, if fully 
realised, is most destructive of high endeavour. 
Speculation may provide an answer to physiological 
materialism, but for the mass of mankind it can pro- 
vide no antidote ; nor yet can an antidote be found in 
the bare theistic conception of a God ineffably remote 
from all human conditions, divided from man by a 
gulf so vast that nothing short of the Incarnation 
can adequately bridge it (pp. 330-333). 

45 (c), A like thought is suggested by the ' prob- 



SUMMARY 391 

lem of evil,' that immemorial difficulty in the way 
of a completely consistent theory of the world on a 
religious basis. Of this difficulty, indeed, the Incar- 
nation affords no speculative solution, but it does 
assuredly afford a practical palliation. For whereas 
a merely metaphysical Theism leaves us face to face 
with a Deity who shows power but not mercy, who 
has contrived a world in which, so far as direct ob- 
servation goes, the whole creation travails together 
in misery, Christianity brings home to us, as nothing 
else could do, that God is no indifferent spectator 
of our sorrows, and in so doing affords the surest 
practical alleviation to a pessimism which seems 
fostered alike by the virtues and the vices of our 
modern civilisation (pp. 333-337). 



